“Never seen”! Two highways in southern France, including a main connection to Spain, were closed for almost 400 kilometers on Friday due to the revolt of the agricultural world. In unusual silence, only tractor convoys drive over the tracks.
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“Demonstrations are quite rare in the world of agriculture, but I think this one will make a statement,” Sylvain Robert, a winemaker in the south of France, told AFP, recalling his profession's “general nervousness” between taxes and tax standards, “which are constantly changing.”
On Friday morning, at a highway toll booth near the city of Montpellier, he joined a convoy of nearly 600 vehicles, including 315 tractors, all flashing lights and waving signs that ranged between alarmist tone (“our end = your hunger”) and more good-natured tone (“our end = your hunger”) changed. “A cannon should save a winemaker”).
According to AFP journalists, this toll booth was the meeting point for several convoys from the region, which then converged in Montpellier.
In view of this spectacular action, the authorities decided to close the A9 between Orange and Sigean (south of Narbonne), a 240 kilometer long axis between Spain and France that is heavily used by trucks, in both directions from early this morning.
The same decision was made along the Rhône Valley: the A7 was closed “as a precaution” for around 150 kilometers between Chanas (south of Lyon) and Orange, as the local authorities announced.
“We have never seen this on such a scale and over such a period of time,” a spokesman for the operating company Vinci Autoroutes told AFP.
These closures caused the secondary road network to be overloaded in places, and the authorities called for caution as “many vehicles are parked on the side of the road”.
On social media, users were concerned as the A7 is normally used by 70,000 vehicles every day, including many trucks from all over Europe, and the A9 by around the same number.
“At least for the day”
“We will stay at least a day, everything will depend on the announcements, but they must be strong because the people there are determined,” Damien Onorre, a member of the management of a winemakers' union, told AFP.
For a week, some French farmers have been demonstrating, blocking roads, unloading foreign trucks in places or dumping manure in front of prefectures. Many of them, whether in conventional or organic farming, complain about the decline in their income, the administrative burden or changing or overly burdensome standards.
“We asked for a calm and respectful movement. “Many people came to make their voices heard, and not necessarily in the right way,” assures Marion Lorente, 30 years old, a breeder of laying hens and nursing sheep, who met on the A9.
“We are on the motorway, but we will not break anything, we will not damage anything and we will sweep the entire section of the motorway when we leave,” promises Thierry Sénéclauze, standing at a stationary roadblock on the A7.
Manure was spilled and straw was burned in several places. As they exited the highway, some protesters burned straw and dumped rotten apples outside a supermarket near Montpellier, an AFP photographer noted.
Other motorway sections in France were closed, for example in Burgundy (centre-east), where the A6 was closed for around a hundred kilometers due to a closure by prefectural decision.