Defiant French farmers stick to barricades

PARIS - French farmers protesting over pay, tax and regulation kept up their roadblocks Thursday as eyes turned to Brussels in hope of more European Union concessions.

Seven blockades remained in place on motorways around Paris late Wednesday, throttling access to the capital.

And 79 people were in custody after a Wednesday incursion into the Rungis wholesale food market, a vital distribution hub for the capital region's 12 million people.

They were accused of organising to carry out property damage, prosecutors in Creteil, southeast of Paris, told AFP late Wednesday.

Truckloads of police backed up by armoured vehicles were controlling access to Rungis early Thursday, an AFP journalist saw, slowing traffic.

"Our plan will certainly be taking a break and coming back," said Frederic Ferrand, who led a farmers' convoy that reached the food market on Wednesday.

Another convoy of tractors heading for Rungis from southwest France was searching for a new route after being held up by police.

In a sign of the pressure on Paris, President Emmanuel Macron has scheduled a one-on-one interview with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen before an EU leaders' summit gets under way in Brussels later Thursday.

Macron's office said the two would discuss "the future of European agriculture", after more than a week of farmers' protests.

Initial gestures from the bloc have failed to calm demonstrations and road blockades that have dogged major agricultural powers, especially France.

'FEWER RESTRICTIONS'

They included a temporary exemption from rules requiring some farmland to be left fallow and limits to imports of some Ukrainian agricultural products, on which tariffs were dropped following Russia's 2022 invasion.

Paris hailed the moves as a victory for its lobbying of Brussels.

But they have not been enough to soothe the grievances of the farmers.

"We want fewer restrictions and especially to be able to fight on the same terms as our competitors," Nicolas Galopin, a farmer from south of Paris, told broadcaster France Inter as he manned a blockade on the A6 motorway.

"It always makes us sick to see more and more of our food being imported, to be dependent," he added.

Brussels has said a contentious free-trade deal with Latin American bloc Mercosur will not go ahead in its current state, although some farmers want it dropped altogether.

French and Belgian farmers had blocked a border crossing point together late Wednesday to condemn trade bargains they say "distort competition".

Away from Brussels, France's second-largest farmers' union Coordination Rurale (CR) suggested members gather at the National Assembly parliament building.

"Given that a lot of farmers want to come to Paris, we're telling them... go to the National Assembly, so that all the MPs and senators can come and meet the farmers," CR's president Veronique Le Floch told RMC radio.

She said members of the profession were heading to the capital in support of their "colleagues" arrested at Rungis on Wednesday.