PARIS (Reuters) – French farmers held a second day of protests on Tuesday over EU-Mercosur trade talks, with the hardline Coordination Rurale union dumping Spanish wine and blocking official buildings as a prelude to threatened disruption to food supply chains.
A push to conclude a trade deal between the European Union and South American nations within Mercosur has reignited rural discontent over unfair competition, burdensome regulations and low farm income.
After France’s largest farm union, the FNSEA, organised more than 80 protests on Monday, including rallies in front of government buildings and lighting “fires of anger” in fields overnight, the Coordination Rurale entered the fray on Tuesday to condemn what it called the “death of agriculture”.
“Our actions are getting tougher because it’s a question of survival and we want a future for our young people,” Coordination Rurale Chairwoman Veronique Le Floc’h told BFMTV.
Some of the union’s members descended on the Spanish border to check merchandise coming in from Spain, emptying white wine from a lorry, French media showed.
The union also dumped tyres and waste in front of government buildings, like in Limoges in central France, while in Agen in the southwest, a flashpoint for similar protests at the start of the year, farmers sprayed slurry on a farming social security office.
The group has threatened to block ports and retailers’ distribution centres to squeeze food supply if the authorities do not announce immediate measures.
The FNSEA welcomed the announcement on Tuesday by the government that it would let the National Assembly debate and vote soon on the prospect of an EU-Mercosur deal.
President Emmanuel Macron has reiterated his opposition to such a deal during a current trip to South America and said France was garnering support from EU countries like Italy and Poland.
British farmers also protested on Tuesday to demand the scrapping of an inheritance tax that they say will destroy family farms and threaten food production.
(Reporting by Gus Trompiz, Sybille de La Hamaide, Michel Rose, Stephane Mahe and Elizabeth Pineau. Editing by Mark Potter)
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