The European Commission demanded assurances from the French government within 24 hours that it was doing everything possible to maintain free trade and movement within Europe.British motorists briefly barricaded one carriageway of the A16 motorway near Calais yesterday in retaliation for a partial blockade of the Channel Tunnel freight terminal. Although the car entrance to the tunnel shuttle, and another freight entrance, were kept open by French police, the British drivers grew tired of delays imposed by the farmers’ barricade.They briefly parked their vehicles across the other carriageway of the motorway, blocking traffic heading in the other direction.Although there was no direct threat of intervention by the French government to end the four-day refinery blockade, the justice, interior and defence ministers all made strong statements yesterday warning that France could no longer be “held to ransom”. The Defence Minister, Alain Richard, said the blockade could pose a threat not just to the economy butto the “security” of the French nation. That comment was widely interpreted as a justification for intervention by the army and gendarmerie, both of which come under Mr Richard’s control.Four-fifths of the petrol stations in France were estimated by oil companies last night to be out of fuel or likely to have exhausted supplies today..

The elderly man in metal-rimmed glasses watched the digital counter spinning on the petrol pump with a grumpy and self-righteous expression. The elderly man in metal-rimmed glasses watched the digital counter spinning on the petrol pump with a grumpy and self-righteous expression.
Five litres, 10 litres, 15 litres, 20 litres, 30 litres.. “Non,” shouted someone in the queue behind. “The limit is 15 litres per person…” “Je m’en foue (I don’t give a stuff) about the limit,” said the man in glasses “I have driven 50km to find this station. I’m filling up.” There was a little shoving and a little name-calling (mostly the French equivalents of “swine” and “old fart”). But what could anyone do? Attempt to siphon the petrol out of the old cheat’s car?Jean-Pierre, the exhausted but just-about-cheerful cashier in one of the few petrol stations in lower Normandy still to have any petrol (though no diesel), shrugged his shoulders “Of course no one respects the official limit,” he said “In France no one respects anything I’ve been shouted at and threatened. What am I supposed to do? I just hope we run out of fuel soon, so I can go home.”This scene – on the A13 autoroute east of Caen – was repeated in varying forms yesterday all over provincial France, except in the eight out of 10 service stations decorated by red and white tape and signs reading: “No fuel”. Even if you did have some petrol in your tank, you were unlikely to travel very far or very fast.Every 50 miles, and in almost all large towns, there was a taxi drivers’ demonstration, a farmers’ blockade or, most infuriating of all, an “operation escargot”: a rolling barricade of 500 or more lorries rumbling down all three lanes of the motorway at 10mph.Ted and Gillian Heyhoe from Salisbury had just avoided the fishermen’s blockade last week and driven to the south of France to start a two-week holiday.

I met them putting the regulation 15 litres into their car at a motorway service station near Rouen “We’ve had enough We’re going home early,” Mr Heyhoe said “There’s no petrol at all in the south. We limped up here from petrol station to petrol station, then we ran into a bloody great taxi protest in Rouen. Where are the police? I’d like to see a policeman, even if only to strangle him.”France, the world’s fourth biggest economy, has become a dysfunctional country Dysfunctional and increasingly bad-tempered. In the fourth day of the blockade of oil refineries by lorry companies, farmers, private ambulances and a motley collection of other protesters against the high price of fuel, life remained virtually undisturbed in Paris (except for a taxi-drivers’ “operation escargot”). The rest of the country coasts inexorably to a halt, like a shiny, expensive car with an empty tank.At Lyons, Nantes and Caen airports, flights were cancelled for lack of aviation fuel. School buses were cancelled in the Vosges and the Massif Central. Supplies of fresh food to the Rungis market outside Paris began to thin out.