For once, Jordan Bardella has abandoned suit shoes. This Saturday, wearing his new boots, he went to a cattle farm in Gironde, alongside MP Grégoire de Fournas, to meet farmers. Anger has been rising in the agricultural world for several days, and blocking actions have been increasing across the country. Five months before the European elections, the far-right party wants to play the rural card and hopes to capitalize on the agricultural malaise. On Tuesday, Jordan Bardella visited the fishermen of Lorient, always with the same perspective. Shake a few hands, make two or three images, and deliver the language elements of the National Rally on the issue.
In the crosshairs, the European Union, its enlargement to Ukraine, the various free trade treaties and the Green deal, a green pact for Europe which aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. At the Instead, Jordan Bardella defends the “agricultural exception”, or the exclusion of the agricultural sector from free trade agreements signed by the EU. The frontists are not blind. For months they have been eyeing their German and Dutch neighbors, and the way their far-right European allies have surfed in their own way on the anger of farmers. The European elections in June are approaching, in the campaign we are firing on all cylinders. Even if it means not condemning violent actions committed by certain farmers, such as the explosion of a building in Carcassonne by wine growers, on the night of January 18 to 19. This year again, Jordan Bardella plans to spend 48 hours at the agricultural show. And now, in recent hours, several elected officials from the National Rally have changed their profile photos on social networks, returning them to the way farmers had turned over city signs a few weeks ago to demonstrate their discontent. The bigger it is, the more it’s acceptable ?
Links with unions
It’s been around twenty years since farmers took the RN (and FN before it) in sympathy. Since 2002 and the emergence of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election. A trend that has solidified over the course of economic crises, Marine Le Pen’s anti-globalization speech, and the feeling of social downgrading felt by the profession associated with the progression of Euroscepticism. At the RN, two elected officials are responsible for the issue: MEP Gilles Lebreton and Médoc MP Grégoire de Fournas. The first sits on the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development in the European Parliament, the second, a wine grower, became passionate about the cause. It was Gilles Lebreton who, in 2022, put Marine Le Pen in contact with executives of the National Federation of Agricultural Operators’ Unions (FNSEA) after being contacted and received by the latter on a farm in Upper Normandy. He also speaks regularly with Christiane Lambert, former president of the FNSEA, now director of Copa, the main European agricultural union. “There was a normalization of our relations, before 2019 she never agreed to meet the representatives of the RN, assures the latter. She and her entourage made me understand that they had been satisfied with my votes in the European Parliament .”
Obviously not on the same wavelength, Christiane Lambert maintains: “The RN MEPs are absolutely not a good relay. How many reports have they produced? They are far from being the ones we see the most, they did not work at European level, they were not there for many votes. There they vote on the last three months, with a speech with variable adjustments, but it is very opportunistic, the string is a bit fat.” A late realization that farmers also blame them for. “Elected officials from all sides have been talking about food sovereignty for months, but it’s just communication, annoys Germain Bach, farmer responsible for the FNSEA in Moselle. The RN, they are recovering like everyone else the other parties. They woke up because there was a spontaneous mobilization on the part of the farmers, but otherwise we would not have heard them. It started from the base, and today the parties are trying to recover this anger, you shouldn’t be embarrassed to be a politician. We have lost confidence in political parties, we no longer believe in their press releases, we want strong actions.”
“We were not their primary concern”
In Moselle, where three out of nine deputies come from the National Rally, links exist between right-wing and far-right elected officials and farmers. We cite in particular Alexandre Loubet, deputy and campaign director of Jordan Bardella for the European elections, or Fabien Di Filippo, deputy for Les Républicains. But they all draw the same observation: if the deputies are listening, no tangible change has been noticed after the discussions. “When you listen to the radio or television, the RN swears that it is always alongside the farmers, comments Julien Viville, responsible for Young Farmers in Moselle. They are trying to recover the movement, it is clearly visible, but we do not sees no impact in everyday life.”
Another subject of annoyance: the double discourse maintained by the frontists towards farmers and mass distribution players. Last March, the vice-president of the National Assembly and RN deputy from the North Sébastien Chenu posed, all smiles, alongside Michel-Edouard Leclerc, although decried by a large part of French farmers for his purchasing policy pursued at against them, during the examination of a proposed law between suppliers and distributors at the Palais Bourbon. Retaining its popular electorate while gaining ground on the employers’ side is the thread on which the RN has been walking for months. “There, they see clearly that there is a big issue given the scale of the movement, assures Julien Viville. But we were not their primary concern. The problem is that today, we are not no longer sufficiently numerous to be the professional body which allows one to be elected.”
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