Paris will be under siege from 2 p.m. today as farmers intensify their protest action and attempt to cut off the capital from the rest of France. They have announced plans to blockade all roads leading to Paris with their tractors, a threat that prompted interior minister Gérald Darmanin to summon police chiefs to his office on Sunday.
Darmanin ordered them to ‘deploy a major defensive operation’ to ensure the farmers are not successful, particularly in their ambition to prevent access to airports and the international food market at Rungis. Prime minister Gabriel Attal had hoped he’d defused the anger of the agricultural industry on Friday when he travelled to the Haute-Garonne region in the south, where the protests began ten days ago, with a list of concessions.
The farmers’ wail of despair echoes through the provinces where deindustrialisation has devastated large swathes of France
The diminutive Attal, dwarfed by the farmers he courteously confronted, said that he understood their anger and reiterated what he’d said earlier
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