Farmers staged protests across France on Monday at the prospect of a trade deal between the European Union (EU) and South America’s Mercosur trade bloc, which will further intensify competition for the French agriculture sector. The EU and four Mercosur members — Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — are pushing to conclude long-running trade negotiations by the end of the year.
The latest round of protests was the biggest since French farmers held weeks of large-scale demonstrations last winter over cheap imports, regulations and meagre incomes. The protests were mostly peaceful, but tractors briefly blocked part of a highway near Paris in the morning, while others demonstrated in front of government buildings.
“We can’t understand how in France, we can continue accepting that our children [and] our fellow citizens eat imported products that we — in France — don’t have the means nor the right to produce. It’s not right, so we have to say, ‘Stop, it’s over, we can’t take it anymore.’ We’re at our wit’s end,” said Christian Daniau, president of the Charentes Farmers Association (CFA).
In 2024, French farmers had to contend with rain-hit harvests, livestock disease outbreaks and a parliamentary election that delayed measures promised to defuse the previous protests. Similar frustration was voiced by farmers across Europe last winter after a surge in imports from Ukraine, following Russia’s invasion in 2022.
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