Police arrest 91 as protesting farmers force into Paris food market

PARIS: French Police have arrested 91 people in a standoff with protesting farmers, who blocked motorways with tractors and briefly broke into the main wholesale food market Rungis.

The people were put under custody after they made a brief intrusion into a storage area of Rungis and caused damage, Paris police prefect Laurent Nunez said on Wednesday.

Earlier on Wednesday, 15 farmers were arrested for obstructing traffic on the A6 motorway, a few kilometre from Rungis, Xinhua news agency reported.

Across the country, nearly 6,000 farmers with 4,500 pieces of machinery have set up 80 blocking points by Wednesday noon, according to the police source.

Since farmers initiated the protests last week against rising prices, bureaucracy and the influx of imports from Ukraine, the French government has promised to simplify administrative procedures, control fuel prices for farming machinery and give additional aid to wine growers.

Facing similar farmer fury in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, the European Commission announced two concessions on Wednesday: temporary exemptions on the "fallow obligations," which impose on farms a rate of four per cent of fallow or non-productive areas, and measures to limit the rise in Ukrainian agricultural imports, which have soared following exemptions from customs duties granted to the country since the spring of 2022.

The French presidential office said that the two measures announced on the European level were in response to France's requests.

President Emmanuel Macron, who is currently on an official visit to Sweden, will meet President of European Commission Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday in Brussels.

The discussion "will focus on the situation of farmers in Europe and France, in the short term, but also the long term," according to Elysee.