PARIS: France’s leading farming unions called on Thursday to end nationwide roadblocks over pay, tax and regulation after securing promises of financial assistance and other help from the government.

“We have decided to suspend the roadblocks... and move to a new form of mobilisation,” Young Farmers (JA) president Arnaud Gaillot said at a press conference alongside Arnaud Rousseau, chief of the biggest rural union FNSEA which is closely allied to the JA.

Farmers have been out in force for more than a week in protests triggered by an agricultural fuel duty hike, complaining their pay is squeezed, taxes are too high and regulations too onerous.

The easing in tensions followed promises of cash, eased regulations and protection against unfair competition by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and his cabinet earlier on Thursday, the government’s second wave of concessions in the space of a week.

Together the FNSEA and JA account for the majority of French farmers’ union memberships although it was not immediately clear if other groups would follow suit.

Rousseau hailed “real progress” and said Attal was “listening... to try and understand what’s at stake for us, inviting us in, talking, discussing and announcing emergency measures”.

But the union chief said he would look to see “initial results” by the time the major Salon de l’Agr­iculture trade fair opens at the end of this month.

“If these markers are not met, we won’t hesitate to resume a general mobilisation,” JA boss Gaillot said.

Rousseau reserved harsh criticism for “deafness” to farmers’ woes at the European level.

He lambasted a “growing lack of understanding between a technocratic structure walled into its Brussels offices’’.

Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2024