Blockages are easing as the holidays approach and roads are expected to reopen, but agricultural anger remains intact. Behind the truce, there is a gaping divide between the State and farmers, revived by health management considered brutal.
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Even if blockages persist in the South-West, calls for a Christmas truce were partly heard on Monday December 22, 2025. Currently, the agricultural crisis is not over, but most of the blockages should be lifted for Christmas, allowing the French to travel and meet up with family. The postponement of the Mercosur vote gave the executive a little breathing space and calmed anger, but its signature is already scheduled for January 12, 2026 in Paraguay, so it is indeed a reprieve for the executive.
Nothing is resolved, because new outbreaks of contagious lumpy skin disease could be detected and the problem is much deeper: remuneration, suicide, standards, unfair competition, tax on fertilizers, reduction in CAP aid… Sébastien Lecornu regained control by receiving the unions on December 19 in Matignon. Gabriel Attal did the same when coming to power in January 2024. Two years later, it is time to really renew the dialogue without forgetting that “there is no love, there is only proof of love.”
How did we get there? A health protocol to fight against contagious lumpy skin disease, poorly understood, poorly accepted, poorly explained, of unprecedented and sudden violence which leaves farmers morally and economically stranded.
The Minister of Agriculture, who is facing her first agricultural crisis, is attracting criticism. The unions had asked Annie Genevard this summer to warn breeders of the consequences of this disease after a case discovered in Savoie, but nothing was done. Today, this lack of dialogue, empathy, listening, proximity is coupled with an absence on December 11, 2025 on the ground in Ariège, the starting point of the confrontation, where the gendarmes virilely confronted the demonstrators who opposed a slaughter.
The crisis has highlighted two worlds that no longer understand each other. Two worlds face to face who find it difficult to speak to each other, to understand each other, that everything is in opposition even though everything is supposed to bring them together. The most telling illustration is the images of the armored vehicles sent by the Ministry of the Interior facing the tractors, giving the feeling of a disproportionate use of force in the face of legitimate anger. This is why the farmers responded with another image, they knelt on the ground singing the Marseillaise in front of the gendarmes. A pacifist reaction, to show that they refuse confrontation and respect the police while showing a strong feeling of belonging to the country.
