On a cold January morning, Paris awoke not to the usual soundtrack of traffic and café chatter, but to the grinding engines of hundreds of tractors rumbling through its grand boulevards. By sunrise, a convoy of roughly 350 farm vehicles had encircled the National Assembly, turning one of Europe’s most recognisable political landmarks into the epicentre of a growing revolt. The farmers who drove them were not merely staging another symbolic protest. They were issuing what many described as a last warning over the European Union’s long-gestating trade agreement with the Mercosur bloc of South American nations.
The EU-Mercosur deal, negotiated for more than twenty years and now scheduled for signature in Asunción, Paraguay, would dramatically expand trade between Europe and Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Brussels sees it as a geopolitical and economic prize: a way to secure strategic supply chains, boost European exports, and counterbalance growing Chinese influence in Latin America. But for farmers in France — and increasingly across the continent — the agreement represents something far darker: the possible collapse of their already fragile livelihoods.
Outside the National Assembly, the atmosphere was tense but disciplined. Rows of tractors stood bumper to bumper, their drivers wrapped in heavy jackets and fluorescent vests bearing the insignia of France’s most powerful agricultural unions, FNSEA and Jeunes Agriculteurs. Homemade placards demanded “concrete and immediate action”, while loudspeakers blasted speeches condemning what they see as an unfair global marketplace.
Thomas, a 25-year-old dairy farmer from Normandy, said he had driven through the night to join the blockade. “We are here to denounce the distortions of competition in Europe”, he told reporters. “We are told to follow the strictest environmental rules in the world, pay high taxes, respect endless regulations — and then Brussels opens the door to products made under completely different conditions.”
His colleague Hector echoed the sentiment. “It’s already difficult to make a decent living as a farmer”, he said. “Free markets are fine in theory, but only when everyone plays by the same rules. Instead of useless subsidies, we need a fundamental rethink of how agriculture is taxed and regulated. ”
At the heart of the protest lies a fear shared by farmers from Brittany to Lombardy: that Europe will soon be flooded with cheap beef, poultry, sugar, and soy produced at far lower cost in South America. Argentina and Brazil, in particular, enjoy vast tracts of inexpensive land, lower labour costs, and regulatory regimes that French farmers say would never be tolerated inside the EU.
In France, opposition to the deal cuts across party lines. From conservative rural deputies to green activists concerned about deforestation in the Amazon, few see the Mercosur agreement as politically defensible. Yet despite Paris’s vocal resistance, President Emmanuel Macron failed last week to rally enough EU member states to form a blocking minority.
That defeat has deepened the sense of betrayal felt by many in the agricultural sector. “For years we have been told that French farming is a strategic asset”, said one cereal producer from the Beauce region. “But when it matters, our own government can’t even protect us in Brussels.”
The timing of the Mercosur deal could hardly be worse for French agriculture. Even before any influx of South American imports, the sector has been buckling under the combined weight of falling prices, rising energy costs, and what farmers describe as suffocating EU-level environmental regulation linked to the Green Deal.
These pressures are starkly reflected in the country’s trade figures. France’s once-robust agricultural trade surplus has collapsed from €10.5 billion in 2015 to just €125 million by October 2025, down from €4.5 billion only a year earlier. For a nation that prides itself on being Europe’s breadbasket, the decline is both economically painful and symbolically humiliating.
The tractor protests in Paris follow similar demonstrations in Belgium, the Netherlands, and earlier this year across rural France, where farmers blocked highways and border crossings to protest pesticide bans, nitrate limits, and what they see as unrealistic climate targets.
The blockade also revealed how politically combustible the issue has become. Several high-profile figures from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party made their way to the National Assembly to offer public support. Sébastien Chenu, vice president of the Assembly, told protesters that his party was “quite aligned with your demands”, while Marion Maréchal went further, urging Macron to withhold France’s annual contribution to the EU budget to force Brussels to abandon the Mercosur deal.
Such rhetoric highlights the broader stakes of the conflict. Agriculture is not merely another sector in France; it is entwined with national identity, regional pride, and a vision of sovereignty that resonates deeply with voters outside the major cities. For the populist right, the farmers’ revolt is fertile ground on which to sow broader Euroscepticism.
Despite the dramatic show of force in Paris, union leaders are under no illusions about where the real battle now lies. Arnaud Rousseau, president of the FNSEA, told the crowd that the next target would be the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
“We are going there on the 20th”, he said, “because we understand that Mercosur will no longer be decided in France but within the European institutions.” The message was clear: if national capitals can no longer stop the deal, the farmers will take their protest directly to the heart of EU democracy.
The tractor blockade around the National Assembly is more than a single-issue protest. It is a warning signal for Europe’s political class. The EU has spent years presenting trade liberalisation and environmental regulation as twin pillars of a modern, values-driven economic model. Yet for many farmers, these policies feel increasingly incompatible with survival on the land.
If the Mercosur agreement is ratified without meaningful safeguards for European producers, the tractors that clogged Paris this January may only be the beginning. For a continent already grappling with rising populism and distrust in Brussels, the revolt of its farmers could prove to be the next great test of the European project itself.
Comments