5 minutes to understand French farmer protests
What they're protesting about, how it's affecting daily life in France and how long it's likely to go on for - here is your quick guide to the farming protests that are sweeping France.
Over the past week French farmers have been taking part in an increasingly disruptive series of protests that have included blocking motorways, ports and city ringroads, seizing and burning good from foreign-registered lorries and dumping loads of manure, waste and animal carcasses in town centres.
LATEST: Which roads are farmers blocking on Friday
Here's your quick guide to what is going on, how long it is likely to last and how it affects daily life and travel in France.
What is disrupted by the protests?
The main effect of the protests is on road travel, especially motorways and main roads. Well over 70 of the country's autoroutes have been fully or partially blocked over the last week, leading to huge traffic jams.
As the week has gone on, the protests have moved into town centres, with rolling roadblocks on the ringroads of cities including Toulouse and Bordeaux, plus demonstrations in front of préfecture buildings in the centre of several towns.
The demos have included dumping or setting fire to tonnes of waste, resulting in the closure of many streets.
So far public transport is largely unaffected, although farmers near Agen did dump waste on a railway line earlier in the week, so trains, buses and planes are departing as normal while city public transport is unaffected.
Public administration and private businesses continue to function as normal - although supermarkets have been targeted by blockades in some towns, while one union is threatening to blockade Rungis, the huge market that supplies fresh produce to Paris.
How long are the protests likely to go on?
Unlike strikes, which must be declared in advance with set dates, this type of protest is open-ended - it will go until farmers either get what they want or give up and go home.
Prime minister Gabriel Attal is set to make an announcement on Friday afternoon which it is hoped will placate some of the protesters. However some of their demands relate to EU rules and paperwork, so cannot be satisfied by France alone.
Union leaders are expected to make statements on Friday evening or over the weekend once they have heard what the PM has to say.
It's possible that unions will split with the hardline but small union Coordination Rurale thought the most likely to keep up the protests.
Will the protests spread?
It's not unusual in France for a protest to be embraced by other groups, and there are signs that this is starting to happen with farmers, as taxi drivers in some cities have joined in with the rolling roadblock operations.
The hardline CGT union has also said that it may join the protests, especially those that blockade power plants and oil refineries. CGT-led blockades of oil refineries in 2023 led to petrol stations across France running dry, although it's yet to be seen whether they could summon the same level of support for this protest.
However France's longest-running protests tend to be those that are either against something that the government is determined to do - such as the pension protests in 2019 and 2023 - or those, like the 'yellow vest' protests in 2018, that have no clearly defined aims or leaders, and are therefore hard to respond to.
Although not everything that farmers are angry about can be addressed immediately, the government has shown that it is keen to negotiate and is likely to announce some kind of financial sweetener for farmers.
Why are they angry?
There are three main unions involved in the protests - the largest FNSEA union, the left-leaning Confédération Paysanne and the anti-EU, right-wing Coordination Rurale - and they all have slightly different aims and complaints.
Overall there are two main complaints; it's becoming increasingly hard to make a living as a farmer in France, two thirds of farmers earn less than €4,500 a year and more than half of farmers are aged 50 plus as younger people leave the profession.
They are bound by an ever-increasing mass of rules, regulations and paperwork that makes the job feel impossible, and are also subject to what they say is unfair competition from imported food that is produced to lower standards, and is therefore cheaper.
READ ALSO Why farmers are threatening to 'turn France upside down'
Secondly they say that both France and Brussels are pressuring farmers to both farm in a more environmentally friendly way but at the same time produce more to ensure 'food sovereignty' for Europe.
It's important to state that most farmers are not against environmental measures per se - farmers are among the first people to feel the effects of climate change - but they feel caught in the middle between contradictory French and EU policies.
Then there are some more specific complaints about the price of agricultural diesel (a planned price hike has been postponed), plans to ban certain weedkillers and pesticides, excessive EU paperwork and the EU's new Mercosur treaty with South America.
When it comes to the EU opinion is divided - the Coordination Rurale union is specifically anti-Brussels but while many farmers complain about EU rules and paperwork, they also rely on EU subsidies. France receives €7.5 billion a year from the EU farm policy, more than any other country, and many French farmers would not be profitable at all without EU subsidies.
OPINION French farmers have legitimate complaints, but it's not all the fault of the EU
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Over the past week French farmers have been taking part in an increasingly disruptive series of protests that have included blocking motorways, ports and city ringroads, seizing and burning good from foreign-registered lorries and dumping loads of manure, waste and animal carcasses in town centres.
LATEST: Which roads are farmers blocking on Friday
Here's your quick guide to what is going on, how long it is likely to last and how it affects daily life and travel in France.
What is disrupted by the protests?
The main effect of the protests is on road travel, especially motorways and main roads. Well over 70 of the country's autoroutes have been fully or partially blocked over the last week, leading to huge traffic jams.
As the week has gone on, the protests have moved into town centres, with rolling roadblocks on the ringroads of cities including Toulouse and Bordeaux, plus demonstrations in front of préfecture buildings in the centre of several towns.
The demos have included dumping or setting fire to tonnes of waste, resulting in the closure of many streets.
So far public transport is largely unaffected, although farmers near Agen did dump waste on a railway line earlier in the week, so trains, buses and planes are departing as normal while city public transport is unaffected.
Public administration and private businesses continue to function as normal - although supermarkets have been targeted by blockades in some towns, while one union is threatening to blockade Rungis, the huge market that supplies fresh produce to Paris.
How long are the protests likely to go on?
Unlike strikes, which must be declared in advance with set dates, this type of protest is open-ended - it will go until farmers either get what they want or give up and go home.
Prime minister Gabriel Attal is set to make an announcement on Friday afternoon which it is hoped will placate some of the protesters. However some of their demands relate to EU rules and paperwork, so cannot be satisfied by France alone.
Union leaders are expected to make statements on Friday evening or over the weekend once they have heard what the PM has to say.
It's possible that unions will split with the hardline but small union Coordination Rurale thought the most likely to keep up the protests.
Will the protests spread?
It's not unusual in France for a protest to be embraced by other groups, and there are signs that this is starting to happen with farmers, as taxi drivers in some cities have joined in with the rolling roadblock operations.
The hardline CGT union has also said that it may join the protests, especially those that blockade power plants and oil refineries. CGT-led blockades of oil refineries in 2023 led to petrol stations across France running dry, although it's yet to be seen whether they could summon the same level of support for this protest.
However France's longest-running protests tend to be those that are either against something that the government is determined to do - such as the pension protests in 2019 and 2023 - or those, like the 'yellow vest' protests in 2018, that have no clearly defined aims or leaders, and are therefore hard to respond to.
Although not everything that farmers are angry about can be addressed immediately, the government has shown that it is keen to negotiate and is likely to announce some kind of financial sweetener for farmers.
Why are they angry?
There are three main unions involved in the protests - the largest FNSEA union, the left-leaning Confédération Paysanne and the anti-EU, right-wing Coordination Rurale - and they all have slightly different aims and complaints.
Overall there are two main complaints; it's becoming increasingly hard to make a living as a farmer in France, two thirds of farmers earn less than €4,500 a year and more than half of farmers are aged 50 plus as younger people leave the profession.
They are bound by an ever-increasing mass of rules, regulations and paperwork that makes the job feel impossible, and are also subject to what they say is unfair competition from imported food that is produced to lower standards, and is therefore cheaper.
READ ALSO Why farmers are threatening to 'turn France upside down'
Secondly they say that both France and Brussels are pressuring farmers to both farm in a more environmentally friendly way but at the same time produce more to ensure 'food sovereignty' for Europe.
It's important to state that most farmers are not against environmental measures per se - farmers are among the first people to feel the effects of climate change - but they feel caught in the middle between contradictory French and EU policies.
Then there are some more specific complaints about the price of agricultural diesel (a planned price hike has been postponed), plans to ban certain weedkillers and pesticides, excessive EU paperwork and the EU's new Mercosur treaty with South America.
When it comes to the EU opinion is divided - the Coordination Rurale union is specifically anti-Brussels but while many farmers complain about EU rules and paperwork, they also rely on EU subsidies. France receives €7.5 billion a year from the EU farm policy, more than any other country, and many French farmers would not be profitable at all without EU subsidies.
OPINION French farmers have legitimate complaints, but it's not all the fault of the EU
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