After Lorient, public works craftsmen block the Brest oil depot

"Mr. Attal has removed the increase in the tax on diesel for farmers. We are asking the same thing," Stéphane Jézéquel, president of the CNATP (National Chamber of Public Works and Construction Craftsmen) told AFP. landscape) of Finistère.

Present since 07 a.m. in front of the Brest oil depot, around thirty craftsmen with their construction equipment began to block the main entrance from midday.

“There are no trucks entering,” said Mr. Jézéquel, although the demonstrators had left a secondary entrance free. “The depot can still operate in reduced service,” he added.

A long line of tanker trucks had formed for several days in front of the Brest depot, where all the traffic unable to access the Lorient (Morbihan) depot was transferred, blocked from January 25 by other craftsmen of the public works, with trucks and backhoe loaders.

“We have not moved, we want a response from Bercy in writing,” Norbert Guillou, president of the CNATP for Morbihan, told AFP.

According to him, the Ministry of the Economy has made an oral commitment to grant public works craftsmen the same exemptions from the increase in the GNR tax that the government granted to farmers in response to their mobilization.

“We have been waiting for a response for a week, they promised it to us since last Friday,” assures the president of CNATP 56, who received reinforcements from farmers in Lorient.

A summary filed by the management of the Lorient oil depot to obtain the lifting of the blockage must be examined on Friday, said Mr. Guillou.

According to Le Télégramme, the blocking of the Lorient depot has so far not led to any notable supply difficulties but results in a loss of activity of some 15.000 euros per day for the depot.

At the end of January, Capeb, an employers' organization of construction craftsmen, estimated that "it cannot be reasonably envisaged" that the objective of a gradual increase in GNR decided at the end of 2023 rests solely "on the shoulders of construction companies in a context of more, where no alternative to machines running on RNG is offered to these same companies".