A few dozen farmers from the FDSEA-JA gathered on Friday in front of Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron's seafront villa in Le Touquet (Pas-de-Calais) and dumped waste nearby, an AFP correspondent observed.

"RIP AGRI", "No Mercosur", "Eat French" or "Stop tax", can be read on a coffin placed in front of the red brick villa of the presidential couple, guarded by law enforcement.

Some bags of manure, tires, cabbages and branches were also dumped near the house with skips.

The action, intended to last all day, is meant to be "symbolic", explains Benoît Hédin, vice-president of the FDSEA agricultural union in the Montreuil-sur-Mer area.

This movement "targets the European policy being pursued today, because we are going backwards. We are demonstrating against the Mercosur agreement, the reduction of the CAP, the tax on fertilizers, unfair competition... It is a general feeling of being fed up," he says.

"We have been protesting for two years and nothing changes, no political decision is made. We are still the butt of the joke: we import products that have no regulatory constraints and that compete with us at prices that it is impossible to match," laments Marc Delaporte, another farmer who came to protest in Le Touquet.

"I have always supported farmers. This is not the first time they have come to Le Touquet: they are looking for a symbolic action to make themselves heard," the LR mayor of the town, Daniel Fasquelle, who was present on site in the morning, told AFP.

"I am defending them against Mercosur." The Hauts-de-France region is a livestock farming area, and "we know very well that" under this agreement, the livestock sectors "would suffer particularly," added Mr. Fasquelle, believing that the protesters want to "put pressure on the President of the Republic," whose position on the subject "has not always been very clear."

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday she was "confident" that the trade agreement with Mercosur countries would be signed in January, after a delay caused by France and Italy amid agricultural anger.

But this postponement is "not enough" for the FNSEA, France's largest agricultural union, which has called on its members to remain mobilized.

Negotiated for more than 25 years, this free trade agreement would notably allow the EU to export more cars, machinery, wines and spirits to Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Conversely, it would facilitate the entry into Europe of South American meat, sugar, rice, honey and soy, which alarms the sectors concerned.