France announces new measures to ease farmers' wrath

France will enshrine in law the principle that it should be self-reliant in food and it will tighten import controls, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said on Thursday, announcing more measures to quell a bout of unrest by French farmers. Attal, speaking at a press conference, also said the government will stop imposing stricter regulation on its farmers than European Union regulations require.

France will enshrine in law the principle that it should be self-reliant in food and it will tighten import controls, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said on Thursday, announcing more measures to quell a bout of unrest by French farmers.

Attal, speaking at a press conference, also said the government will stop imposing stricter regulation on its farmers than European Union regulations require. The announcements were his latest bid to calm angry farmers, who have been mounted hundreds of roadblocks and disrupted transport for over two weeks.

"We want to be sovereign. Self-reliant for growing food, self-reliant for harvesting, self-reliant to feed ourselves... We will enter this sovereignty target into law," Attal said. Detailing his agenda to boost France's agricultural sector - Europe's largest - Attal said it was "out of the question" that France would accept to agree to the Mercosur trade deal with Latin American countries.

He also said France will step up safety checks on food imports, notably to make sure that imported foods do not have traces of pesticides that are banned in France or the EU. France will stop going above and beyond EU regulation on pesticides, he said.

"It makes no sense to ban pesticides in France before such decisions are taken on an EU level, we will end this practice," he said. Notably, France plans to ban the import of fruits and vegetables treated with Bayer's Thiacloprid pesticide without delay, he said.

The European Food Safety Agency has said thiacloprid not only kills insects but also harms bees and bumblebees, and has highlighted concerns about the active substance being toxic for humans and present in too great a concentration in ground water. Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the government will also evaluate the effectiveness of a law for fair food prices and the process of annual negotiations with retailers.

Farmers have blocked retailers' distribution centers in France and Brussels to protest the pressure put on them in contract negotiations with supermarkets. Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau said the opening of European markets to Ukraine agriculture products had destabilised food markets, "which is not in our interest and not in Ukraine's interest either". But he announced no new measures on that front.

Attal had announced a first batch of measures to appease farmers last week - including a dropping a plan to phase out subsidies for agricultural diesel - but farmers' unions have rejected these as insufficient. As Attal spoke, motorways all over France remained blocked by tractors, while in Brussels, farmers set fire to garbage and toppled a statue in a square in the European quarter during an EU summit.