adminPARIS — The French government yesterday called on farmers blockading key access roads around Paris to stop their demonstrations, after one man died and six were wounded in two separate car accidents around the French capital.
“I demand the immediate lifting of the blockages as a sign of responsibility,” said Transport Minister Fréderic Cuvillier in a television interview.
The victim was a firefighter on his way to work, while the second accident involved a tractor and a van transporting policemen, Mr Cuvillier said.
Farmer unions from the Paris region had announced a blockade of the capital to protest the overhaul of the European Common Agricultural Policy, which now prescribes more generous transfers for smaller plots of land.
The unions also demanded the resignation of Agriculture Minister Stéphane Le Foll, a longtime ally of President François Hollande.
During the negotiations for the revamping of the CAP, the largest chunk of the European Union budget, France pushed to increase aid for smaller farms to allow for a fairer distribution of European funds.
Farmer unions in France — the largest recipient of EU agricultural aid — are worried that the measure will hit profitability at larger farms which benefit from economies of scale in the cultivation of grain.
“It is a matter of saving our companies,” Damien Greffin, a cereal grower in the Paris region and one of the protest’s spokesmen, said in a radio interview.
The overhauled CAP will increase EU help for 260 000 French farmers with plots of land smaller than 52 hectares (128 acres). Government projections show that in 2019 the top 20 percent beneficiaries of EU farm aid in France will capture 48 percent of subsidies, down from 55 percent now.
The European Parliament approved Wednesday the CAP reforms as part of a budget deal for the next 7 years. Over the period, agriculture will absorb Euro 373 billion out of a total Euro 976 billion EU budget.— Wall Street Journal.
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