Since Monday, farmers' union organizations have been demonstrating throughout France, in particular to prevent the signing of the free trade agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur countries… In the South-West, the rumble has continued heard this Friday, on the fifth day of the farmers' movement. The point.
A Carrefour logistics base blocked in Toulouse
While farmers from Rural Coordination unblocked a purchasing center in Mont-de-Marsan (Landes), demonstrators took up a position in front of a logistics base of the mass distribution giant Carrefour in Colomiers, near Toulouse. At the beginning of the afternoon, a dozen tractors and cars of the demonstrators blocked the entrance to the establishment, stopping the coming and going of trucks entering and leaving to supply stores in the region. Farmers, mainly from the Aveyron Rural Coordination (CR12), dumped trailers of tires and waste.
To justify the mobilization, Jérôme Fougassier, cattle breeder and member of CR12, explained that he was particularly worried about competition from Mercosur imports if the free trade treaty is concluded, “products without traceability” according to him. . “The population must mobilize,” he pleaded. We are at a turning point in the movement, we must not give up.”
“We want to be able to make a living from our profession,” explains Aurélie Fabre, a goat and cow breeder in Aveyron. “We buy our production at ridiculous prices which do not cover our production costs, and the consumer pays a very high price,” lamented the 26-year-old young woman.
End of blockade of commercial port in Bordeaux
The troops of the Rural Coordination (CR) of Lot-et-Garonne unblocked the commercial port of Bordeaux as planned on Friday morning to return to Agen, where the president of the FNSEA, a rival union, is expected for a congress.
José Pérez, co-president of CR47, announced the lifting of the blockade on Thursday evening, explaining that the Prime Minister had responded to agricultural demands concerning the “overtransposition” of the rules imposed by the European Union, which would penalize certain sectors. “He said that the farmers were right and that he was going to look, overtransposition by overtransposition,” Mr. Pérez repeated Friday morning.
“We had undertaken, if he did that, to leave the premises, and in any case this morning we would have been dislodged by force, the regional prefect told us that yesterday. We don’t want to give them this honor so we will leave with our heads held high,” he added. The blockade of the Bordeaux port, which began on Wednesday evening, was the last major action carried out this week.
In Agen, a visit from the FNSEA was more than tense
The trip of the president of the FNSEA Arnaud Rousseau to Agen in Lot-et-Garonne, stronghold of Rural Coordination, was disrupted on Friday. The arrival of Arnaud Rousseau for the National Congress of Vegetable Producers met with a hostile reception from the CR47: around fifty activists gathered at midday in front of the CRS stationed in front of the gates from the exhibition center, where the prefect of the department was.
In an electric atmosphere, they booed the boss of the FNSEA, the majority agricultural union at the national level, letting him return to his vehicle under police escort. “You are not stopping him from going out but let him see that in Lot-en-Garonne, we are at home,” Serge Bousquet-Cassagne, president (CR) of the Chamber of Agriculture, told his troops. of the department. Despite attempts to block his vehicle, Arnaud Rousseau stormed out of the gathering.
Several entrances to the commercial area had been blocked by waste fires, slurry and litter.
