Farmers in France are protesting against rising energy costs, the price of agricultural diesel and dwindling incomes. Highways are blocked and an attack is carried out on an administration building.
French farmers are doing the same as their German colleagues: They have blocked several motorways and trunk roads in southern France. The blockades on the A20, A62 and A64 motorways in the Toulouse area that began on Thursday continued on Friday, as the newspaper “Ouest France” and the broadcaster France bleu reported. Near Toulouse, farmers probably carried out an explosive attack on an administration building.
Farmers also made passage on several national roads impossible with tractors and straw bales. The farmers are insisting on government help in view of the EHD cattle disease that has broken out in the region and only want to end their protest when the new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal listens to them locally.
Numerous problems have accumulated among farmers: for example, the water supply for their farms in a region where persistent drought is increasingly becoming a burden. As in Germany, the topic is the price of agricultural diesel, energy costs in general and the income situation of farmers.
They have toilets and supplies with them
Portable toilets, power generators and food supplies at the protest site suggested the blockades may continue for a while. Farmers spent the night at blockade points on the highways. The prefecture allowed the police to use drones to monitor the situation.
In the city of Carcassonne, located between Toulouse and Narbonne, there was an explosive attack on a regional environmental administration building on Friday night, causing considerable damage, as the France 3 broadcaster reported. Windows flew out of the building and offices on the ground floor were vandalized. The attack is attributed to a wine-growing association whose lettering was sprayed on an adjacent wall.
The local prefecture condemned the attack, saying nothing justified such acts of violence. “The human suffering is immense for many winegrowers,” said the president of the local winegrowers’ association, Frédéric Rouanet, to France 3. “We don’t sell anything anymore and the burdens and regulations are strangling us. I’m afraid it will end very badly.”
