While the anger of the farmers subsides, it is time to take stock for the departments supposed to take charge of the repairs and the cleaning of the damage caused by the mobilization costing hundreds of thousands of euros.
After ten days of farmers’ mobilization, the roads of France still bear the marks of their passage: highways plowed by tractors, fires on roundabouts or even manure in front of public buildings. Although the agricultural unions have asked their members to clean up before leaving the dams, the departments are still seeing damage. Costing hundreds of thousands of euros, the cleaning and repairs are in principle the responsibility of the departmental councils, but some elected officials are opposed to it, reports the Huffingtonpost. “The best is for the State, taking into account the time of discussion between the starting point and the finishing point of the movement, to take on the bill, through a fund at its disposal. (… .) It’s his responsibility,” estimates François Baroin, mayor of Troyes, who estimates the bill for covering the damage at between 300,000 and 400,000 euros. On the Haute-Vienne side, crossed at the beginning of the week by the convoy of farmers who wanted to reach the Rungis market, the extent of the damage, difficult to quantify precisely, should reach “several hundred thousand euros”, according to Stéphane Destruhaut. The socialist vice-president of the department considers that “the departments in general are in no way responsible for the cause of this conflict” and finds it “logical that the costs are incurred by the State”, explains the website. Brittany, which does not have highways operated by a private company such as Vinci, estimates the cost of cleaning interventions at more than a million euros. Which will “dent” the budget allocated to the Interdepartmental Directorate of Western Roads, explains France Bleue.
In this context, the town hall of Toulouse turned to justice. On January 16, after a thousand farmers demonstrated in the pink city, the municipality filed a complaint against X. According to France Bleu Occitane, the deputy mayor in charge of legal affairs, Pierre Esplugas-Labatut , asks “the public prosecutor’s office and the police and gendarmerie services to identify the perpetrators [of the damage] so that their civil liability can be incurred” before adding that according to him, “it is logical that the people of Toulouse do not pay the damages caused”.
