Tractors started to leave their blockade outside the National Assembly building in Paris in the early hours of Wednesday, after spending 24 hours in the capital.
They had decided to stay in front of the Palais Bourbon “for the night” despite the promise of an “emergency agricultural law” offered by the Prime Minister during the day in an attempt to calm their anger.
READ ALSO Furious farmers roll hundreds of tractors into Paris in fresh protests
The government had last week announced a planned €300-million package to support the farmers, as well as other measures, including an increase in the number of wolves that can be killed.
“A delegation was received around midnight by Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard, who gave us details and commitments on cash loans and restructuring for the most indebted farmers,” FNSEA Vice President Luc Smessaert told AFP, shortly before the farmers started to leave Paris.
That is not, however, the end of the protests - as the farmers were planning to leave Paris, around 40 of the colleagues, with 15 tractors, had entered Toulouse on Tuesday night and parked about 100m from the préfecture.
They gathered in defiance of a decree issued by the préfet of Haute-Garonne and the Occitanie region prohibiting, “the protest demonstration on Wednesday, January 14th, 2026, in Toulouse and its suburbs,” planned by several farmers’ unions, as well as the movement of tractors and agricultural machinery on the region's main roads.
The tractors outside the préfecture were removed by police at around 7am and have since set up a roadblock in front of Toulouse-Blagnac airport. A dozen tractors are disrupting traffic at a roundabout near the airport.
It wasn’t the only protest planned for Wednesday morning in the Toulouse region.
At 6am, a blockade linked to the agricultural protests was reported on the A64 autoroute near the Pink City. The highway was closed in both directions at the junction with the Toulouse ring road.
A protest is also under way on the A680, near Toulouse.
Meanwhile in Brittany, local news organisation ICI Breizh Izel has reported that the RN165 expressway is blocked again in southern Finistère, and protests are taking place at the entrance to Quimper and in Châteauneuf-du-Faou.
Farmers’ ongoing protests reflect a deep sense of malaise afflicting the country’s agricultural sector, with the planned signing of the trade deal between the European Union and the Mercosur bloc seen as the last straw.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was expected to sign the trade agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur countries on Wednesday.
This agreement is one of the main objectives of her second term. The trade pact could enter into “immediate provisional application” that same day, France’s Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard said.
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