Farmers show they are opposed to changes in laws that ease restrictions on pesticides and water use in agriculture.
French farmers disrupt traffic on highways around Paris and gathered in front of parliament to protest amendments submitted by opposition lawmakers to a bill that would loosen environmental regulations on agriculture.
FNSEA, a member of France’s leading agricultural coalition, parked around ten tractors outside the parliament outside the parliament, where they began discussing the law in the afternoon.
The law submitted by far-right lawmaker Laurent’s Duplone suggests simplifying approval for breeding facilities, relaxing restrictions on the use of water to promote irrigation reservoirs, and reapproving prohibited neonicotinoid pesticides used in sugar beet cultivation, which environmentalists say harm bees.
The proposed law is part of a wider trend in many European Union states to rewind environmental laws as farmers tackle rising costs and households suffer from a life-rising crisis.
More than 150 farmers from the Ile-de-France, Grand Est and Provence-Alpes-Alpes-Cote D’Azur region gathered peacefully in front of the Parliament, drinking coffee and eating croissants after blocking the main roads around the capital.
“This bill lifting restrictions on agricultural experts is extremely important to us,” FNSEA Secretary-General Herbe Rapy told AFP News Agency.
“What we’re looking for is that we can simply work in a European environment. A single market, a single set of rules. We’ve been fighting for this for 20 years. Once there’s a bill along these lines. … There’s no patience to wait anymore.”
FNSEA and its allies say the neonicotinoid pesticide acetamipride, which has been banned in France since 2018 due to environmental and health concerns, should be allowed in France, like the EU as a whole, to stop crops from causing harm.
Some unions representing environmental activists and small, organic farmers say the bill will benefit the large agricultural industry at the expense of independent operators.
Opponents of President Emmanuel Macron on the political left have proposed multiple amendments that protesting farmers said they threatened the bill.
“We are asking our MPs to get serious and vote as they are, and that’s what they are,” said Julien Thierry, a grain farmer in the Yvelines division in the suburbs of Paris, criticising the Associated Press’ grain farmers of Greens and Left-wing French politicians (LFI).
Ecologist MP Delphine Bateau said the bill’s text was “inspired by Trump,” while LFI MP Aurelie Trouve, in an article in France’s Daily Le Monde, meant “a symbol of political surrender, an ecological encounter.”
FNSEA chief Arnorsaw said the protests will continue until Wednesday with farmers from the central de loire and hauts-de-france region who are expected to join their colleagues.
The protest is also expected in Brussels next week, targeting EU environmental regulations and green policies.
Farmers in France and Europe won concessions after opposing cheap foreign competition last year, and what they say is unnecessary regulations.
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