Farmers’ anger is growing in France. Tractors began entering the towns of Agen (Lot-et-Garonne) and headed towards the city center of Perpignan (Pyrénées-Orientales), Monday January 22, according to the Pyrénées-Orientales prefecture and journalists covering these actions. Monday in the Pyrénées-Orientales, around a hundred farmers with around fifty tractors began to block a toll south of Perpignan, according to France Bleu. In the afternoon, the prefecture announced the end of the blockade on the A9 motorway, and a demonstration now blocking the outskirts of the city. Follow our live stream.
Several blockages in progress in Occitania. In Haute-Garonne, a portion of the A64 motorway is still blocked at Carbonne, between Toulouse and Saint-Gaudens. “There are no plans for evacuation by the police (…) since there is no damage to this site,” declared the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin. In Tarn-et-Garonne, the access points to the Golfech power station, which supplies electricity to the Toulouse basin, are also blocked by around fifty tractors. The prefecture also reported blockages on two interchanges, near Saint-Loup and Castelsarrasin, on the A62 linking Toulouse and Bordeaux.
A meeting planned in Matignon. Faced with the rumble, which is spreading in Europe without sparing France, Gabriel Attal receives at 6 p.m. the powerful agricultural union FNSEA, which is expecting “concrete acts”. “Our farmers are not bandits, polluters, people who torture animals, as we sometimes hear”launched the Prime Minister during a trip to the Rhône.
A European mobilization. The government fears a conflagration while from the Netherlands to Romania via Poland and Germany, farmers are stepping up actions against this tax increase and the European Green Deal. All this against a backdrop of inflation and competition from Ukrainian imports.