PARIS — French farmers are protesting again.
Agricultural workers parked their tractors in front of France’s National Assembly and organized road blocks across the country for demonstrations in support of legislation which would make it easier to obtain administrative authorization to build breeding facilities and allow the temporary use of acetamiprid, an insecticide that has been banned in France since 2018.
Both proposals are the type of red-tape-slashing measures farmers sought when they organized large-scale protests last year.
The bill is set to be discussed in the National Assembly on Monday, but its backers said green and left-wing parties tried to obstruct proceedings by proposing hundreds of amendments to the text before the debate. The proposed law was approved by the French Senate in January and is backed by Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard.
The new wave of protests was organized by influential farming lobbies FNSEA and Jeunes Agriculteurs, though one left-wing farmer’s union opposes it.
FNSEA chief Arnaud Rousseau on Monday said protests will continue until Wednesday but acknowledged that they will be mostly symbolic.
“The aim is not to annoy the French, but to bring the message we put across a year and a half ago, which is that French agriculture is in danger,” Rousseau said in an interview with FranceInfo.
However, France’s left-wing opposition parties, in particular France Unbowed and the Greens, worry that the French government and the European Union are going too far in targeting measures meant to protect the environment, including on the use of pesticides, in the wake of last year’s massive demonstrations.
European Union agriculture ministers are gathering in Brussels on Monday to discuss the bloc’s Common Agriculture Policy as well as trade with Ukraine and the United States.
Protesters returned to Brussels last week to sway policymakers as they discussed the shape of the EU’s agriculture subsidy system.
CORRECTION: This article has been updated to correct details regarding last week’s protest in Brussels.
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