Rural Coordination, the second agricultural union in France, called for the mobilization of farmers on Sunday.
They start the year with some punchy action. Farmers will “mount on Paris and all around” on Sunday January 5, said the spokesperson for Rural Coordination, Patrick Legras at the microphone of RMC this Monday, December 30. Farmer Pierre-Guillaume Mercadal announced it in a video published on X two days earlier. “On January 5 we are all going to block Paris. We are calling you all. The only thing that will make the State react is that we block Paris,” he claimed in the name of the Rural Coordination.
But what are the reasons for this call for mobilization? The agricultural union wishes to “have a very quick meeting with the Prime Minister and the Minister of Agriculture”, to find solutions to the agricultural crisis which has lasted “for a year”, explained the spokesperson for Coordination rural.
In question, “several problems which are specific to France”, according to Patrick Legras, such as “the overtransposition of standards, which means that in France we have many products which are prohibited within the framework of our productions, but that everything we import from foreign countries comes from countries that do not have these standards”, explained Pierre-Guillaume Mercadal on ARENH, European electricity pricing which means that we pay more than twice as much per kilowatt hour”, explained Pierre-Guillaume Mercadal.
Farmers’ representatives hope that this mobilization will quickly result in a response to their demands. If this is not the case, the blockade of the capital could tighten and last longer than expected.