Today, tractors are taking to the streets of Paris on the eve of the opening of the Agricultural Exhibition (Salon de l’agriculture) in a climate, as in other European countries, of intense dissatisfaction of the agricultural world.
President Emmanuel Macron, who is proposing a major public debate with farmers tomorrow, Saturday, has angered their unions by inviting an environmental collective, Soulèvements de la Terre (Revolts of the Earth), before pushing back against the polemic.
🚨🇫🇷 Paris, France
The Farmers are back & have descended on the French Capital in protest of criminal legislation that will bankrupt The Farmers under the Guise of the Climate Scam.
Silence from Macron & his Globalist sell out Government – they simply don’t represent people. pic.twitter.com/OVBUJazhC3
— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) February 23, 2024
The president of the powerful FNSEA trade union Arnaud Rousseau said today that he would not take part in the dialogue, deploring the president’s “particularly cynical” invitation to the collective, which the government until recently wanted to disband, accusing it of radicalism .
As he said, the invitation of the Soulèvements de la Terre shows that the government “did not understand the concerns of the farmers at all”.
Faced with angry reactions and mistrust from the unions, the Élysée however quickly backed down, announcing yesterday, Thursday night, that the collective would not be invited after all, “in order to ensure the calmness of the discussions”.
A total of a few hundred people, trade unionists, industrialists and heads of environmental organizations or commercial chains are expected to take part in the debate, as the Elysee announced yesterday.
PARIS – The farmers are out in force.
Silence from Macron as 72% of his country support the farming community against the EU policies making them poorer.
We hear you France 🔥
— Persephone (@persephvoice) February 23, 2024
The president of the Agricultural Fair, Jean-Luc Poulin, told AFP that he expects “dynamic” exchanges.
The various announcements by the government and the European Union after the farmers’ movement started do not seem to have satisfied them at all.
Road blockades and checks on supermarkets: actions resumed on Wednesday after an intervention by Prime Minister Gabriel Atal to improve and simplify the lives of farmers, for pesticides, seasonal workers or wages.
At the national level, the intelligence services find, according to a police source, that the base of the rural world remains “quite difficult to control, especially in some departments”.
Two different processions of tractors are marching in Paris today. About 30 tractors gathered in the morning before they started moving towards the center of the capital.
The second will end up in front of the Agricultural Fair at the end of the afternoon.
“A celebration”
FNSEA admits that the exhibition is being held this year “at an extremely political juncture”. But the organization also wants the event to remain a “celebration”.
Despite the difficult context, the exhibition did not deviate from tradition: its symbol cow, Oreillet, a five-year-old from Normandy, got off the truck that was transporting her this morning in front of a crowd of journalists, snorted in front of the asphalt of the exhibition park of Port de Versailles and then taken to the hall where it will be displayed with great pomp during the nine days of the salon.
“I’m less stressed now that she’s arrived,” said her owner, François Foucault.
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