Farmer fights fine for parking tractor in Paris

A farmer from central France is appealing against a fine for allegedly parking his tractor in a sleazy Paris neighbourhood while he was tending his fields 400km away in the tiny hamlet of Gouzougnat.

Raphael Schmid/Open access

Patrick Pilat, who runs an organic farm in the hamlet of Gouzougnat in the Creuse area, says that he was notified of an 11-euro fine on 22 December and a notice that a vehicle bearing his tractor’s licence plate was parked on the capital’s rue du Faubourg St Denis on 1 December.

The area is known as a centre of prostitution, but Pilat says that this has not aroused his wife’s suspicions.

Pilat did use his tractor that day, he says, but to tend to his crops, rather than to get his oats.

He has written to the authorities contesting the fine.

“I explained that the vehicle that committed the offence is a tractor,” he told the AFP news agency. “And I wrote that, if I wanted to go to Paris, I certainly wouldn’t go by tractor.”

Travelling at the tractor’s usual speed of 15km per hour, it would take him 24 hours to get to Paris.

Pilat believes that the parking ticket contains conclusive proof that he is innocent of the parking offence: it mentions a Ford.

“My tractor is a Renault,” he points out triumphantly.