In a dramatic escalation, French farmers stormed Paris’s heart, choking roads to the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe while gridlocking Champs-Élysées. Their target: the controversial EU-Mercosur free trade deal, decried as a death knell for national farming, plus fury at Macron’s livestock management failures.
Thursday’s protests saw farmers hurdle police lines, deploy vehicles to snarl pre-dawn traffic, and stage sit-ins at strategic points. The Rural Coordination Union, a right-wing farmers’ group, rallied the capital assault, alarmed by potential waves of bargain-basement imports from South America that could tank domestic prices.
Public ire boils over Macron’s disease control measures, perceived as inadequate and dismissive. Central France’s Stéphane Pelletier, union vice-chair from Vienne, lamented: ‘We’re trapped in rage and hopelessness, treated like outsiders akin to Mercosur—ditched for space tech, Airbus, or car industries.’
Official rebuke was swift. Government mouthpiece Maud Bregeon deemed the tactics—motorway shutdowns and National Assembly gatherings—flat-out illegal on airwaves. This comes hot on the heels of the European Commission’s olive branch: upfront €45 billion from EU coffers for farmers, paired with fertilizer import duty reductions to placate Mercosur holdouts.
The deal envisions a mega free-trade zone spanning Europe and Latin America, supercharging EU shipments of vehicles, machinery, wine, and spirits. French agrarians counter that Mercosur giants—Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay—will retaliate with dirt-cheap ag products, gutting local competitiveness.
As barricades rise and horns blare, this revolt lays bare rural discontent in an urban-centric Europe. Farmers frame it as a fight for survival against faceless trade pacts, urging leaders to prioritize food security over export dreams. With echoes of past yellow vest unrest, Paris braces for prolonged strife.