Farmers promise to ‘besiege’ capital in dispute over regulations, pay and taxes they say are destroying rural life

France has told its farmers that any action to block access to Paris’s main market for fresh food would be crossing a red line as a tractor protest made good on a threat to blockade the city for an indefinite period, stopping traffic on eight main motorways into the capital in a row over regulations, pay and taxes.

As it became clear the farmers planned to encircle the city, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, held a crisis meeting with key cabinet ministers on what was being called “Operation Paris Siege”. Prisca Thevenot, a government spokesperson, said announcements would be made on Tuesday. “The whole government and the president are mobilised,” she said.