Deal worth €2.21bn brings end to general strike spearheaded by coalition of 37 unions that had brought productivity in the territory to a halt

Activists in French Guiana have lifted strikes that crippled the territory for almost a month after the government in Paris pledged an aid package worth billions of euros.



A general strike by 37 unions has paralysed the French territory in South America, with locals pressing for a “Marshall plan” along the lines of the huge US economic support given to help western Europe to recover after the second world war.

An AFP journalist said the government and the collective spearheading the protests signed a deal in Cayenne late on Friday, just two days before France’s presidential election. Under the accord, the French government pledged to provide €2.1bn (£1.85bn) in aid to the territory but did not give a precise timetable for its implementation. The amount would be in addition to just over €1bn in emergency funding agreed in early April but which the movement considered insufficient.

France’s overseas territories minister, Ericka Bareigts, hailed the deal as “a defining day” for the territory’s future.

Blockades in the capital, Cayenne, began to be lifted on Friday. Roadblocks at Europe’s Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, where the launch of an Ariane space rocket had been postponed, were initially kept in place but lifted late on Saturday.

“Operations will begin again on Monday,” the space station managers said in a statement, adding that postponed launches “would be rescheduled”. The Kourou space centre has become a symbol of economic disparity in Guiana and a focus for anger, given that many locals have no electricity or running water and around one in four is jobless.

The protests caused the flow of fresh produce to slow to a dribble in the territory bordering Suriname and northern Brazil on the northeast coast of South America, which is home to 250,000 people.