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French farmers vented their anger on President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday as he arrived at the annual agricultural show in Paris, a massive fair long seen as a test of presidents’ relationship with the countryside.
A large crowd that had camped outside the night before broke inside and scuffled with police officers in riot gear, while Mr Macron entered through a side door to meet unions demanding an end to difficulties in the industry. Was doing.
During an hour-long closed-door meeting before the fair opened, which included Mr Macron along with top Cabinet members, farmers loudly sang the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise”, whistled, raised fists and chanted slogans. The President would have to resign as prize cows and pigs brought to the capital from farms across the country looked on nervously from their display pens.
The rowdy confrontation was the latest in a month-long demonstration in which farmers have blocked roads in France and around Paris – a movement that has spread to other countries including Greece, Poland, Belgium and Germany.
Farmers say the issues include rapidly rising costs, unfair competition from allowing imports into Europe from other countries able to produce food more cheaply, and EU rules specifically aimed at preventing or reversing climate change. Are.
Agriculture accounts for about 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the EU says drastic changes are needed. Farmers say the European targets impose stifling administrative and financial burdens.
When Mr Macron emerged from the meeting, his face pale and sad, he announced that his government would introduce a bill next month to address “the income crisis, the crisis of confidence and the crisis of recognition” for farmers in France. . “We need to show recognition, respect, pride for the agricultural model and our farmers,” he said.
It was the latest in a series of efforts led by new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal to appease farmers. But they are almost unanimous in demanding concrete change rather than promises.
Mr Macron stopped by the fair, known as the Salon International d’Agriculture, to engage in a spirited impromptu discussion with a select group of farmers eager to communicate their frustrations directly. Many of them wore yellow, green and red caps to indicate which union they belonged to.
“Cheap grain imports from Ukraine are destroying French agriculture. What are you going to do about this?” demanded one farmer. Mr Macron, sans suit jacket and in a white shirt and tie, listened and took notes.
“We can barely make ends meet!” The second one shouted. “We should not block all roads across the country to get needed relief.”
Mr Macron, who has struggled during his nearly seven-year presidency to connect with poorer and more rural parts of France where they are considered remote and isolated, told farmers the situation was “disastrous”. He urged not to watch, saying that French agriculture was “not disintegrating.”
He called for peace. “We will not react to this agricultural crisis in a few hours,” he said, adding that his government was taking several steps to address the deeper problems, including a meeting with farmer unions, food manufacturers and retailers at the Rashtrapati Bhavan next month. Includes conversation with. Creating “an agricultural plan for 2040”.
That seems a long way off for farmers and their families struggling to make it to the end of the month.
Mr Macron said an “emergency cash-flow plan” would bring together banks and the agricultural sector to help struggling farmers, and promised to push for a Europe-wide solution to another issue: large supermarkets. Chains that form purchasing cartels to bargain Farmers say food prices deprive them of a fair income. He also announced the establishment of a production cost index that would “serve as a price level.”
“I stand with our farmers and French agriculture,” Mr Macron insisted.
Ahead of Mr Macron’s visit to the fair, Mr Atal had tried to defuse the protests by outlining a package of measures aimed at reassuring farmers that agriculture remained a top priority for the government.
Shri Atal said, “We want to keep agriculture in the fundamental interests of the country in the same way as our defense or our security.”
But those promises did not satisfy the crowd that gathered at the salon on Saturday morning. The crowd was so dense and unruly that at one point farmers and police officers were in danger of being crushed. People fell over each other in goat pens filled with hay in one part of a huge hall that housed animals.
Visiting the Salon has been a political rite of passage for every French president since Jacques Chirac, who was in office from 1995 to 2007, often serving as a barometer of one’s ability to connect with rural France. Mr Chirac, considered a gentleman farmer, was generally warmly welcomed, while his successor Nicolas Sarkozy lost his temper with a protester, whom he told to “get lost, you poor idiot”. – a moment that will haunt them for the rest of the day. Presidency.
At the beginning of Mr Macron’s tenure, he was greeted with an egg thrown near his face in the salon, but he continued to meet and greet farmers in the hall.
But the mass clashes with police on Saturday were unlike anything at the fair in recent memory. He suggests that the farmers’ movement is unlikely to end soon.
