Emmanuel Macron’s Government promises new measures in favor of farmers within 48 hours in the face of pressure from the protests, and intends to renegotiate the end of mandatory fallow at Thursday’s EU summit and limitations on the entry of Ukrainian products.
In an interview on France 2, Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau said that “in 48 hours, there will be a certain number of things that we can put on the table.”
A few hours before the start of the blockades of some of the main entrance axes to Parispromised by the large agricultural unions on an indefinite basis, Fesneau has stressed that this will be added to the measures already presented last Friday by the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal.
Furthermore, the head of Agriculture has announced that he himself will go to Brussels to accompany Macron at the extraordinary European summit, in which the French president has decided to put the crisis in agriculture, and in particular viticulture, fallow land, on the agenda. and imports from Ukraine.
Detail of the measurements
On fallow suppression mandatory 4% of land, which would have to be applied this year, under the current rules of the Common Agricultural Policy, has insisted that France wants “this week the decision can be made” and has noted that 22 of the 27 EU states are in favor.
Refering to entry of agricultural products from Ukraine as if they were from another country in the European Union, something that was granted to kyiv to support it after the Russian invasion of February 2022, The French minister has indicated that has caused “perverse effects” and? Paris wants there to be “a limit” to the “disorganization” it generates.
These limitations, about which it has not given many details, France hopes will affect chicken, eggs and sugar, which are the products that come into direct competition with the French.
Another point that the Government considers important to respond to the farmers’ demands is equalize environmental obligations in France (for example on the use of pesticides and herbicides) with those in force in the other EU countries.
Asked what law enforcement will do if farmers who are blocking highways and roads begin to control foreign trucksas happened last week when some of them (particularly with Spanish products) were looted, Fesneau has given a cryptic response.
On the one hand, he has repeated that the instructions of the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, to the 15,000 police and gendarmes who have been deployed today to the protests is not to intervene “as long as property and people are respected.”
On the other hand, he has indicated that control is the work of Customs and State services to verify that products entering from abroad comply with the rules.
Planas responds to Attal’s words
The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, has indicated today that The rules of free movement “apply the same” in all States, therefore, “there is no preference”since the European Commission is in charge of regulating that there are no “competitive advantages” in the Member States of the European Union.
Planas has thus responded to the words of the French Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, referring to the fact that rules are imposed on French farmers that “not others.” The Spanish minister has reaffirmed that he understands the annoyance on the part of the agricultural sector of our country over these types of statements, “especially being a country that in the last 12 months has exported 70 billion euros,” so “as I say, “We must respect the demonstrations of each other but we have to respect each other’s markets to enhance this freedom of movement.”