Coordination rurale puts 100 tractors in Paris as France says it will vote no on Mercosur

About 100 tractors entered Paris before dawn on Thursday despite a police ban, and farmers called by Coordination rurale gathered outside the National Assembly to oppose the EU-Mercosur trade deal. The interior ministry later counted 2,200 farmers and 625 tractors in 67 actions across 39 departments. President Emmanuel Macron said France would vote against the agreement.

Some of the Paris tractors reached the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower before the main group settled at parliament. Banners named beef, poultry and sugar. Those three products are the ones French farm unions say would enter under rules they consider weaker on environment and animal welfare than the rules applied in France. The agreement covers Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The Paris action was the visible end of a wider day. Sixty-seven separate actions in 39 departments is a large map for a few thousand people. Coordination rurale, not the larger FNSEA, issued the call. The split matters inside French farm politics. FNSEA has spent years inside the talks over safeguards. Coordination rurale has treated the deal as something to block, not amend. Thursday's tractors belonged to the second camp.

A second complaint rode with the trade argument. Farmers also criticised the handling of dermatose nodulaire contagieuse, lumpy skin disease in cattle. The disease is separate from Mercosur. It has given the unions a domestic grievance to put next to the import fear: a trade deal they say will bring cheaper meat, and a cattle disease they say the state has managed badly. The interior ministry's tally does not split the crowd by slogan. Both were on the banners.

Macron's no is a position, not a veto by itself. The European vote is the decision point. France can vote against and still be outnumbered if other capitals back the text. That is why the tractors were aimed at the National Assembly as well as at Brussels. A French government that has already said no still has to hold the line when the council vote is called, and farm unions do not trust that line to hold without pressure in Paris.

The deal has been negotiated, parked, and revived for years. Farm groups in France, Ireland and Poland have been the loudest opponents. Industrial exporters in Germany and Spain have been among the supporters, because the text also cuts tariffs on cars, machinery and parts going the other way. Thursday's count does not include those exporters. It includes 625 tractors and 2,200 farmers.

Police had banned the Paris convoy. The tractors came in anyway, before dawn, which is the usual hour for these entries because the ring road is emptier. The ministry did not, in the figures released on Thursday, publish an arrest total for the farm actions. The school marches the same day produced 504 arrests. The two protests shared a city and not a demand.

What Thursday settled is the French government's public vote and the size of the farm turnout. France will oppose the text. Coordination rurale put 100 tractors inside the capital and 625 on the roads of 39 departments. The European vote still has to be taken. Until that vote, the safeguard clauses farmers want written into any quota for beef and sugar are the items still open on the page.