By Athena Papakosta

Paris remains surrounded by peasants. All highways leading to the French capital are blocked by tractors and hay barricades.

The French farmers are determined for the French government to meet their demands by talking about a battle that they will fight to the end as, as they stress, it concerns their survival.

New announcements are expected today from Emmanuel Macron’s government, which was mobilized with the French president convening an emergency cabinet yesterday, Monday.

The French government has already deployed 15,000 police officers around Paris to ensure that tractors do not enter the French capital and that access to Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports remains free. The aim is also not to block Europe’s largest fresh produce market, the Renzis market, which supplies 60% of the French capital’s fresh food to 12 million citizens.

According to the Guardian, by Monday afternoon there had been 156km of traffic jams on the motorways around Paris with the National Confederation of Road Transport reporting that deliveries had been affected but not yet having a full picture of the impact of the plan which the French peasants have dubbed it the “siege of Paris”.

France’s farmers make it clear that with their stand they intend to block food deliveries to supermarkets.

As the bureaucracy in Brussels and Paris explains, it is suffocating them and they demand, among other things, fairer prices for their products, the continuation of state subsidies for agricultural fuels, protection of organic crops and protection from cheap imports.

They have already rejected the first round of measures announced by the French government through its new prime minister, Gabriel Atal, judging them as insufficient. These included simplifying red tape and canceling the increase in diesel tax on farm machinery.

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron will meet European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday in Brussels to discuss the agricultural industry and EU support for farmers.

“Our aim is not to disrupt or destroy the lives of the French,” says the head of the farmers’ confederation, FNSEA, Arnaud Rousseau, “but to put pressure on the government to find a quick solution.”

Farmers’ blockades in besieged Paris will not be lifted before Thursday as a Brussels summit is scheduled for February 1, while farmers in Germany, who first started the dance of mobilizations, are keeping their engines burning. However, the farmers in Belgium and the Netherlands are also taking to the streets, with the whole of Europe remaining in an agricultural cordon and the farmers not taking a step back.