France warns farmers that blocking Paris market will be red line in protest

France has told its farmers that any action to block access to Paris’s main market for fresh food would be crossing a red line as a tractor protest made good on a threat to blockade the city for an indefinite period, stopping traffic on eight main motorways into the capital in a row over regulations, pay and taxes.

As it became clear the farmers planned to encircle the city, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, held a crisis meeting with key cabinet ministers on what was being called “Operation Paris Siege”. Prisca Thevenot, a government spokesperson, said announcements would be made on Tuesday. “The whole government and the president are mobilised,” she said.

The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said 15,000 police and gendarmes had been mobilised to prevent the tractors from entering Paris and other cities where protests were happening, and to keep access open to Charles de Gaulle-Roissy airport north of the city and Orly airport in the south, as well as the region’s main fresh food market at Rungis, the largest in Europe. He warned farmers that blocking Rungis, which supplies 60% of Paris’s fresh food to about 12 million people, would be crossing a red line.

The first motorway barrage was reported shortly before 2pm when 30 tractors blocked the A4 20 miles east of Paris in both directions. Shortly afterwards, the A13 about 35 miles northwest of Paris was blocked in the direction of the capital. Tractors were reported to have blocked other main routes into and out of the city, forcing motorists to use increasingly congested side roads.

By Monday evening, there were 97 miles (156km) of traffic jams reported on the motorways. The National Federation for Road Transport confirmed that the blockages had hit deliveries but it was too early to quantify the impact. It stressed the importance of protecting transporters and their goods as well as the right for them to circulate.

The authorities were advising drivers to cancel or postpone all non-essential road travel.

Farmers, particularly the country’s thousands of independent producers, say they are being strangled by EU and French bureaucracy and regulations and claim the traditional way of rural life is facing collapse. They are demanding fairer prices for produce, the continuation of subsidies on the agricultural diesel used to run their tractors and other vehicles, and financial aid for organic farmers.

The French government has been taken by surprise by the depth of anger among farmers. Several months ago young farmers turned town and village road signs upside down in protest but the action has escalated in the last week. Protesters had at the weekend rejected concessions made by the prime minister, Gabriel Attal, and promised to “besiege” the capital by early afternoon on Monday.

Across France several main motorway routes have been blocked since protests began a week ago. In Brittany, residents say they have been unable to travel to the south of France because of blockades. “Travelling on smaller roads is also quite impractical as these are also blocked intermittently,” one said. “It’s not just around Paris.”

Clément Torpier, the president of the Île de France Young Farmers, told BFMTV: “The aim is not to annoy the public but to get answers from the government to come up with further measures.”

Stéphane Sanchez, the director of the Greater Paris Basin branch of the main farming union, the FNSEA, said the blockade was being organised with “almost military precision”, with shifts of farmers deployed on to the barricades.

“We’ve thought of everything and have prepared meticulously. We’re not leaving anything to chance in order to make it a real long-term siege,” Sanchez said. He said that if there was no acceptable response from the government they would also block major non-motorway roads.

Attal was expected to meet farmers’ union leaders later on Monday.

On Monday, hundreds of German farmers used tractors to block ports, including Hamburg, one of the busiest European hubs for container shipping, in protest at plans by the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to scrap agriculture subsidies. The government has partially compromised but not enough to satisfy angry farmers.

In France, several farmers’ union leaders have called on members to exert maximum pressure on the government this week, particularly in the run-up to Attal’s speech to parliament on Tuesday outlining his government’s political programme.

In the south-west, protesters continued blocking roads outside Pau, Bayonne and Agen over the weekend and farmers planned to lay siege to Lyon from Monday afternoon. Farmers have also begun blocking access to ski resorts in the Pyrenees.

Arnaud Rousseau, the leader of the FNSEA, said the campaign and blockades would continue until at least Thursday, when Macron will join other European leaders in Brussels to discuss the EU budget.

Macron will meet Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, to address the agricultural crisis, the Elysée said on Monday.

Rousseau said the protests would affect every French region.

On Monday morning, the agriculture minister, Marc Fesneau, said there would be new announcements addressing the protests within 48 hours and that he was travelling to Brussels this week.

“We continue to work with their representatives … we are working with them to propose a certain number of measures that will show the willingness of the government to address the crisis,” Fesneau told French television.