FRENCH FARMERS PROTEST OVER EU-MERCOSUR DEAL – Prospects of a trade deal sharpens discontent over foreign competition
French farmers set up a camp as they blocked a road near Paris on Sunday as the prospect of a trade deal between European and Mercosur countries sharpens discontent over foreign competition that fuelled a farming crisis earlier this year.
Tractors could be seen blocking the road in Velizy-Villacoublay under the eye of police, as farmers prepared to spend the night on-site before leaving the next day.
A push by the European Union and South America’s Mercosur bloc to conclude long-running trade negotiations by the end of the year has rekindled anger in France at cheaper agricultural imports not subject to the same standards as domestic produce.
The mood in France, however, has worsened after harvests were hit by rain, disease broke out amongst the livestock and a snap election that delayed measures promised to defuse the previous protests, which saw farmers block highways for weeks.
As farms face cheaper imports, burdensome regulations and meagre income, a Mercosur deal represented a bitter “cherry on the cake” farmers do no want, Arnaud Rousseau, head of France’s main farmers’ union, the FNSEA, told BFM TV on Sunday.
Rousseau said by his calculations, tens of thousands of farms are in financial trouble and only about a third of measures announced by the previous government have been implemented.
