The movement of anger does not weaken. The FNSEA and the Young Farmers, after questioning their members, took “the decision to continue this mobilization”, declared this Friday, January 26, the president of the FNSEA Arnaud Rousseau on TF1. “What was said this evening does not calm the anger, we must go further,” he said, believing that Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s announcements, intended to appease farmers, were “too fair” and “did not (meet)” all expectations.
To the head of government, “we are proposing to meet him tomorrow morning”, added the head of the organization which, together with the JA, is the majority union in the profession. On certain points, such as non-road diesel, announcements “are going in the right direction”. But overall “they do not answer all of the questions we ask ourselves”, said Arnaud Rousseau, citing in particular the problems linked to Ukraine, the “overtransposition” in France of European environmental standards and the retirement of farmers. Continuing the mobilization is “a difficult but necessary decision,” declared Arnaud Rousseau.
The Occitan breeder Jérôme Bayle, initiator of the first dam who became a figure in the protest, announced, for his part, alongside Prime Minister Gabriel Attal that the Carbonne dam (Haute-Garonne) would be lifted by Saturday noon. “If we fought, it was to stop all this […] This evening I announce to you that tomorrow at noon the motorway will be able to travel”, he said to the applause of the farmers.
“We will continue to remain mobilized”
A little earlier, the spokesperson for the Confédération Paysanne, Laurence Marandola, affirmed on RTL that the aid and simplification measures for farmers announced by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal were “very largely insufficient”. “We will continue to remain mobilized. It is not necessarily roadblocks, there will be different forms of mobilization, on the road, on roundabouts, in front of supermarkets, inventive ways of telling the government that it is very largely insufficient,” she announced.
If the Prime Minister has multiplied the measures (“immediate simplification measures” of the administrative mille-feuille, end of the increase in non-road diesel, “very heavy” sanctions against several companies which do not respect the Egalim law) to try to stem the crisis underway for a week, “we have not heard any announcement to ensure that in the very short term no farmer will have to sell their products below the cost price of their products […] That’s why it’s not enough,” explained the spokesperson for the 3rd representative union, classified on the left.
More than 72,000 farmers were mobilized this Friday in 85 departments to express their anger, according to a count carried out by the majority agricultural union FNSEA, associated with Young Farmers, and published Friday on the social network