The A62 motorway reopened after farmers' blockade was lifted

The A62 motorway reopened on Sunday evening, after farmers lifted the blockades they had put in place on February 20 between Agen and Montauban. Traffic was first restored in the Bordeaux-Toulouse direction, before being restored in the Toulouse-Bordeaux direction a few hours later. The Valence d'Agen and Castelsarrasin interchanges, in Tarn-et-Garonne, reopened in the middle of the night from Sunday to Monday. Before their reopening, Vinci Autoroutes had stated that it had to carry out a “cleaning of the interchanges where the damage is particularly significant”.

In a press release, the highway manager notably noted “significant volumes of waste and bulky items of all kinds (around 100 m3 of tires, pieces of scrap metal, rubble, bales of straw, agricultural slurry, etc.) to be evacuated” . Autoroutes du Sud de la France (ASF), a subsidiary of Vinci, “deplores this unacceptable violence and regrets the obstruction of traffic which has penalized thousands of users for more than a month (and) has filed a complaint,” writes Vinci again. On February 20, four days before the opening of the Agricultural Show, farmers blocked traffic on the A62 for around 70 km. At the end of January, the Lot-et-Garonne Rural Coordination had already blocked the A62 near Agen for almost a week.

Before the opening of the Agricultural Show, the mobilization of farmers that began in January had already resulted in several government commitments, ranging from hundreds of millions in emergency aid to the promise of a simplification shock. The Show, which ended on Sunday, was an opportunity to present new pledges. Acceding to a strong request from the FNSEA, Emmanuel Macron notably committed to recognizing agriculture “as a major general interest of the French nation”; responding to Rural Coordination, he mentioned “an emergency cash flow plan”; and addressed to the Peasant Confederation, opened a debate on “floor prices”.