French farmers rage against EU-Mercosur trade deal

PARIS: Hundreds of French farmers protested in Paris Thursday after rolling into the capital on tractors, angry at a planned EU trade deal with South American bloc Mercosur they fear will create unfair competition.

Dozens of tractors arrived before dawn and drove through Paris, some pausing at the Eiffel Tower and others at the Arc de Triomphe, in a protest organised by the Rural Confederation union.

“We said we’d come up to Paris — here we are,” said Ludovic Ducloux, co-leader of one of the union’s chapters.

One of the tractors bore the message “No to Mercosur”, referring to the deal with the bloc comprising Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay.

The deal would create one of the world’s biggest free-trade areas and help the 27-nation European Union export more vehicles, machinery, wines and spirits to Latin America.

EU member states are expected to vote to give the text the final go-ahead on Friday, paving the way for a formal signature next week.

Farmers fear being undercut by a flow of cheaper goods from agricultural giant Brazil and its neighbours.

“We’re not here to cause trouble,” Damien Cornier, a 49-year-old farmer from the northwest Eure region, told AFP.

“We just want to work and make a living from our profession.”

Surrounded by police, farmers demonstrated in front of French parliament’s lower house, heckling the National Assembly President Yael Braun-Pivet when she came out to meet with them.

She and the head of the upper-house Senate, Gerard Larcher, then met the farmers’ union representatives.

Arnaud Rousseau, the head of the main FNSEA union, afterwards said he had demanded the French legislature debate new measures to help the country’s farmers.

Unions have called for more protests in front of the EU Parliament building in the French city of Strasbourg on January 20 if the deal is signed.

There were 100 tractors in the Paris region, the interior ministry told AFP earlier on Thursday, but “most are blocked at the gates of the capital”.

It later said 670 protesters were in the capital.

In another protest near the southwestern city of Bordeaux, about 40 farm vehicles blocked access to a fuel depot, said local officials. Farmers are also upset over a government decision to cull cows in response to the spread of nodular dermatitis, a bovine sickness widely known as lumpy skin disease.