The protest of French farmers is escalating. The protesters, according to police reports, they raided a storage area of the Rungis general markets, on the outskirts of Paris, where “damage” was committed. The farmers were evacuated by the police and 79 people were stopped by the police. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, had warned the demonstrators that any attempt to access the general markets of Rungis, the most important wholesale market in France, would be prevented by the police. The demonstrators, the minister warned on Sud Radio, must not enter “Rungis, but if they ever do so, obviously, I repeat it here, we will not let it happen”.
A group of farmers from the north of the country had gathered this morning at a checkpoint on the A1 motorway, between Paris and Lille, blocked in turn by the gendarmes’ armored vehicles just two kilometers from the large transalpine airport that connects Paris to the rest of the world. The revolting farmers had asked the gendarmes to symbolically advance them ten metres, but the police refused, maintaining their position.
In Germania, Farmers once again blocked roads and motorway entrances with tractors in protest against planned subsidy cuts in the sector. In particular, protest actions are taking place in Bavaria, where farmers want to block numerous accesses to roads and highways and where traffic disruptions are expected. Farmers also mobilized in other federal states, gathering with tractors on several bridges and highway intersections in the Neubrandenburg area. In Saxony-Anhalt tractors temporarily blocked several motorway entrances.
Protests continue in Belgium. Several crossing points of the border between Belgium and France they were blocked as part of a joint protest by farmers from the two countries. According to the French newspaper La Voix du Nord, the farmers intend to stay on site all day before heading to Brussels on Thursday to coincide with the extraordinary European Union summit. The most critical situation arose on Wednesday morning on the motorway near the municipality of Aalter in Flanders, blocked by tractors in both directions.
The Athens-Lamia state road was closed in both directions by a blockade of farmers from the town of Atalanti, in the Central Greece. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with farmers who organized protests in Vonitsa, Aetolia. A spokesperson for the protest called, among other things, for immediate support measures from the government, the reduction of production costs and the creation of infrastructure projects in the countryside. “You know very well that support for the primary sector is our top political priority. I know the problems,” the prime minister said, and added: “We are always open to seeing what we can do better both at national and European level.”