Blocking a buffalo grill, a tractor assembly against the Maison de l’E Europe … Symbolic meetings were held on Thursday to the call of the First Agricultural Alliance of Fsa-Jeune farmers, against “aberrant” imports that undermine French agriculture.
Other actions are announced for Friday, far, despite everything, the great days of blocking the last two winters, while the harvest and crops still occupy the peasant world.
In the visitor of the farmers, the draft of the free trade agreement between the European Union and the Latin American countries of Mercosur, of which Brussels launched the ratification process in early September, and in front of which France, yesterday very opposite, seems to be less unfavorable.
In more general terms, it is about mobilizing against “Mercosur, the taxes imposed by Donald Trump and the flow of international imports that do not meet the standards that are ours,” said Arnaud Rousseau, the president of the Fensea, who initially planned mobilizations later in the fall.
“Let us not imply what we do not want us to produce. That is, the hypocrisy of Europe. Under the disguise of ecology, we import what we do not produce here, with any environmental and social standard”, therefore, deplora Dominique Noury, farmer of Charolais and cows of poultry, during an action in Dijón.
The agreement with Mercosur should allow the EU to export more cars, machines, wines … but the agreement will also facilitate entry to bef, poultry, sugar, honey, rice, exempt from customs tasks.
While Brussels insists on the weakness of the expected volumes, the European sectors referred to crying for the risk of destabilization and lower prices, and especially to an unfair competition due to the least standards of environmental production and health and failed controls.
Dispersed Union Order
On Thursday, around fifty farmers, according to union representatives, blocked the entrance to a buffalo grill in Pusey, near Vesoul (Haute-Saône), to protest against Mercosur and the defense of French flesh. They brought a Charolaise in front of the main door and labeled the store “I am French, like French”.
In Plérin (Côtes d’Amor), around fifty protesters gathered in the pork market, according to an AFP photographer.
In the center of Dijon, 150 farmers arrived, with 41 tractors and containers of garbage, dump, land and straw in front of the house of Europe. “It is for Europe that we are there. We import flesh that we have no right to produce with us, when we have the most sustainable agriculture in the world,” said AFP Antoine Fauchet, president of the JA in IS-Sur-Tille (Côte d’Or).
The mobilization will continue on Friday in several ways: mobilizations in supermarkets, parades against prefectures, presentation of products considered “aberrant” (apples of Chile, the United States, etc.), or regional event with tractors place d’Armes, in front of the palace of the Verseras.
The Mercosur text must still be approved by the Member States and then by the European Parliament, the Commission with the hope of its approval at the end of December.
Agricultural unions express their opposition to the treaty in a rare unanimity movement. But they mobilize in dispersed order.
Rural Coordination (CR), in a desire to highlight, wants to be received by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to present his proposals, before a mobilization “before the end of the year.”
The 3rd union, the confection Paysanne, for its part announced a demonstration in Paris, “head tractors”, on October 14.
Remembering his commitment to for life against free trade agreements, he denounces the “deep contradictions of the leaders of the Fensea and the CR” whose fight against the standards “avoids a real winning strategy against free trade agreements”
Source: BFM TV
