“We don’t respond to suffering by sending CRS. » Guest of the TF1 newspaper, Thursday, November 25, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, assumed to “let it happen” to the farmers who are stepping up their actions by blocking highways and demonstrating in many cities for several days.
“Do they attack police officers and gendarmes, do they attack public buildings, do they set fire to public buildings? This is not the case,” Mr. Darmanin justified. For the Minister of the Interior, “farmers work and, when they want to demonstrate that they have demands, they must be heard.” “As interior minister, at the request of the president and the prime minister, I let them do it,” he added. Opposing them to “radical ecologists” who “destroy basins” intended for irrigation, Gérald Darmanin says he has “confidence in farmers”.
“If they respect the rules of the Republic, and they do, they are patriots, there is no reason to involve the police and gendarmes,” he continued.
For the third day in a row, road blockades and fisticuffs have increased across the country. The president of the National Federation of Farmers' Unions (FNSEA), Arnaud Rousseau, who is due to go to a highway in the Rhône on Friday, welcomed a "historic" mobilization on Thursday evening, estimating that more than 55,000 people demonstrated in France. The Ile-de-France sections of the FNSEA and Young Farmers (JA) also called, Thursday, for the “launch of the blockade of Paris” on Friday, from 2 p.m.
Announcements from Gabriel Attal on Friday
In some towns, the situation was still tense on Thursday evening: in Agen, where farmers dumped waste and slurry in front of the station and blocked the railway tracks, causing the interruption of train traffic between Marmande and Agen; and in Bordeaux, where peasants attacked the prefecture, dumping straw, slurry and tires, before setting it on fire.
To respond to the anger of farmers and the demands of the main unions, the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, and his Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, should go to Haute-Garonne on Friday afternoon, the FNSEA announced on Thursday. Mr. Attal's office announced at midday that the head of government would make "concrete proposals for simplification measures" on Friday.
