Frédéric, yellow vest of the Rural Coordination (CR) on his back, watches the CRS vans leave with the feeling of duty accomplished.
“We are the first to have managed to come this far!
It’s a victory,” says this head of the Haute-Saône CR, in front of a dumpster bearing the words “Our end will be your hunger”.
And too bad if fifteen of his “colleagues” were taken away by the police for “obstructing traffic”.
This Wednesday morning, around ten o'clock, around ten tractors managed to access - under police escort - the Porte de Paray of the Rungis international market.
The moment they parked, the CRS, stationed in numbers at each entrance, arrested them.
“Everything happened peacefully,” confides a MIN official.
We were waiting for them.
» No confrontation took place.
A convoy from Vesoul
The convoy organized by the local CR left Monday evening from Vesoul.
Several independent farmers, or members of the Young Farmers (JA) union, joined him along the way.
“We slept in Troyes (Doubs) and left in the night,” says Frédéric.
Throughout their journey, the police followed them closely and stopped them in several places.
“We played the game of cat and mouse for two days,” laughs Christophe, a 56-year-old cereal farmer.
They blocked us, we turned around, we took side roads, in the fields or in the forest... We drove in the night without headlights or flashing lights to be discreet.
We managed to lose them sometimes.
» Others, like manager Frédéric, took to the road with their individual car.
“That’s what keeps me free,” he smiles.
This will allow him, at lunchtime, to move the tractors to park them in a “more suitable” location, at the request of the police.
And after ?
“We don’t know,” breathes Frédéric.
“Maybe we'll go home, now that we've arrived here, we don't really know what else to do…” says Christophe.
They are not planning, for the moment, to join the convoy of the CR of Lot-et-Garonne, which left Monday morning to also reach the Rungis market.
“But I would be surprised if they succeeded,” sighs Christophe.
Or they will be escorted by the police.
» And they too would end up in police custody.