French farmers are planning protests starting Monday to voice their opposition to the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement.
They argue that the deal, which would increase imports from South America, will negatively impact European agriculture. This announcement follows similar calls for demonstrations from Belgian farmers near the EU headquarters in Brussels.
“This trade agreement, which links part of the South American states to Europe, risks having dramatic consequences for agriculture,” FNSEA’s Arnaud Rousseau told France Inter radio.
“So we will be in all regions from Monday, for a few days, to make the voice of France heard at the time of the G20 in Brazil, and we hope that all the European countries will join us because the subject is not a country, a French subject, it is a European subject,” he added.
Despite the upcoming protests, French farmers are not planning to block roads or highways as they did last year in response to cheaper imports, including from Ukraine, and growing regulatory burdens. “We are not here to bother the French people, we are here to tell them that we are proud to feed them and that continuing to produce in France,” Rousseau emphasized.
French Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard also criticized the free trade agreement, calling it “a bad agreement” that would allow large quantities of South American goods, such as “99,000 tons of beef, 180,000 tons of sugar and similar quantities of poultry meat,” to enter the European market, creating harmful competition for local farmers.
Adding to farmers’ frustrations are weather-impacted harvests, outbreaks of livestock diseases, and the political gridlock following France’s snap election earlier this summer.
