Farmers’ anger: several highways have reopened, but are still blocked in some places

Traffic resumed on several motorways in France on Friday after two weeks of blockages by thousands of farmers and major government concessions, especially for pesticides.

The strategic A7 motorway in southern France, which had been cut for 130 km since January 23, has reopened. The convoy, which set off from Agen (Lot et Garonne) towards Paris, turned back. And no more blockages have been recorded in Ile-de-France, a police source confirmed.

“A few rare localized points” want to “hold out until Saturday,” and “individual groups” “hold out until the Agricultural Exhibition (February 24 – March 3),” the police source summarized.

At 3pm on Friday, nine motorways operated by France’s main concessionaire Vinci remained closed and around forty junctions closed, three times fewer than at the peak of traffic. Farmers have left behind “hundreds of tons of waste” which is slowing the resumption of work as it needs to be cleaned up and restored, the spokesman said.

Union threat

On Thursday, the majority union alliance FNSEA-Jeunes Agriculteurs (JA) called for “a suspension of the blockade and a move to a new form of mobilization.” FNSEA wants the first measures of the Agricultural Exhibition and the law to be implemented by June, its president Arnaud Rousseau said Friday on RMC-BFMTV. “If we end up being left out or if this is all just a blip, we will do it again. »

The Rural Coordination, the second representative union, for its part “invited” its members to “suspend” the action. “The agricultural world will remain mobilized in the run-up to the Agricultural Show and remain extremely vigilant about the progress expected at national and European level,” the organization said in a press release.

A third union, Confédération paysanne, remains mobilized because the “fundamental question of income” is “still not addressed directly by the government.” As for organic farmers, they “feel like those left out of the negotiations,” laments their federation, FNAB, which estimates the sector’s losses at 550 million euros over two years and for which “the suspension of Ecophyto is just another drop of water in disappointment.”

Reducing pesticide use

On Thursday, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, in his third round of statements in a week, listed measures that he said met “most of the expectations” of farmers. In a major change aimed at lifting the blockade, he announced the “closure” of the Ecophyto plan to reduce pesticide use.

“France has decided to act against reason, against history, against environmental catastrophe,” the non-governmental organization Agir pour l’environnement said in a press release on Friday. “We must move away from a punitive ecology and towards an ecology of solutions,” government spokeswoman Prisca Thévenot said on Friday, assuring that the executive branch “continues to have environmental ambitions, but this ecology must be grounded in concrete realities.”

In the Lyon (Rhône) area, the dams have mostly diverged. A notable exception is the A43 motorway, which is still blocked by the Confederation of Paysanne some thirty kilometers east towards Chambery. Some demonstrations also continue to disrupt traffic on certain sections of the A9, A10, A20 and A54 motorways, around Clermont-Ferrand and further north on the A71 or even south of Dijon on the A31.

Dispersed Actions

In Hautes-de-France, all roadblocks have been lifted and no action is planned by the FNSEA regional office in the coming days, its president Simon Amme told AFP. “There’s an ultimatum at the (Agricultural) Show,” he warns. According to him, the tractors that blocked the A1 highway near Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport are “going back.”

New events are being organized here and there. Thus, the filter barrier was installed on Friday morning on the toll road near Saint-Quentin (Aisne), on the A26 motorway, points out Bruno Cardot from the General Confederation of Beet Planters (CGB), a specialized association of the FNSEA. The action was continued “because the base demanded it, a kind of last stand, a decompression chamber after ten very intense days,” explains the planter.

In Occitania, once the epicenter of the protest movement but losing momentum since the arrival of Gabriel Attal a week ago, a new series of announcements has led to the lifting – immediately or soon – of several roadblocks, especially in Aveyron and Gers.