French politicians receive death threats over EU-Canada trade deal

FRENCH politician Claire O'Petit on Thursday said she had received death threats from farmers angry over a controversial EU-Canada trade deal recently approved by parliament and championed by President Emmanuel Macron.

By ROMINA MCGUINNESS


The country’s interior minister ordered police to provide extra security to lawmakers after they complained their offices had been “walled or smashed up” by angry farmers. “My car was smashed up. I’ve received death threats. This has to stop,” Mrs O’Petit told France’s RTL radio. French farmers angered by the free-trade agreement with Canada have protested in recent weeks by damaging at least 20 offices belonging to lawmakers from Mr Macron’s centrist La République en Marche (LREM) party.

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“Some 144 lawmakers have had their offices walled or smashed up, received death threats or been verbally abused” because they supposedly misvoted in favour of the EU-Canada trade pact, Mrs O’Petit continued, adding that she “sometimes felt in danger”.

“We will never yield to such threats,” she warned.

Christophe Castaner, the interior minister, has ordered police to boost security around the offices and homes of all parliamentarians in response to the attacks.

Some MPs have even set up hotlines to police headquarters after receiving death threats.


Farmers launched fresh attacks on politicians’ offices overnight in Poitiers, Loudun and Chatellerault in western France, a regional branch of Mr Macron’s LREM party said on Thursday.

“I am appalled by the wall and the graffiti that was put up last night in front of my office by the farmers,” Sacha Houlié, who represents the LREM party in Poitiers, said on Twitter.

The office attacks are “acts of violence, symbolic violence maybe, but acts of violence nevertheless," Mr Houlié later told Europe 1 radio.

A local farmers’ association has claimed responsibility for the latest protest, which entailed blocking access to the offices with impromptu brick walls on which they sprayed slogans against the EU-Canada treaty, known as CETA.