Farmers blocked highways across France and emptied the contents of several trucks carrying foreign-grown vegetables on Thursday as they pressed the government to protect them from cheap imports, rising costs and red tape.

Some farming unions have threatened to blockade Paris. On Thursday, dozens of tractors led a go-slow during rush-hour near Versailles on the southwestern edge of the capital.European regulations that hurt farmers, such as rules on mandatory fallow land.

As Attal convened senior ministers, farmers used bales of hay and tractors to block major arteries across the country, the European Union’s biggest agricultural producer. Crates of tomatoes, cabbages and cauliflowers that one group of farmers said had been imported from neighbouring countries were strewn across the A7 highway that links Marseille and Lyon, France’s second and third biggest cities.