The announcement by the head of the Republicans took his own camp by surprise, while some farmers reject a “welfare” measure.
“No farmer should earn less than 1,500 euros net per month,” declared Éric Ciotti on January 28 in the columns of Sunday Newspaper. To everyone’s surprise, the president of the Les Républicains party defended the establishment of “a financial support system for farmers who live below the poverty line”. He proposed to finance this with the help of sanctions imposed on “distributors who do not respect the EGalim law” and by the elimination of “certain aid spent at a loss, in particular for urban policy”. On France 2, he also suggested dipping into the financing of State Medical Aid (AME).
Eric Ciotti’s proposal sparked an outcry in his own camp. “It is an idea which is contrary to what we defend and it is very far from the demands of farmers”, reacted the LR vice-president of the Senate, Sophie Primas, to Public Senate. “And when I read that Éric Ciotti proposes to partly finance this measure by taking over city policy, it pits urban residents against rural residents,” she laments. “Accept a SMIC farmers, it is not at all in their DNA, farmers ask to make a living from their activity”, adds Pascale Gruny, LR vice-president of the Senate Social Affairs Committee.
No new “allowance”
“A minimum income still means being assisted,” confirms a fruit producer interviewed by RMC. Not to mention that “economically, setting a minimum income does not work because farmers are business leaders”, points out Jean-Marie Séronie, independent agroeconomist, with Public Senate.
“I reassure you right away, this is in no way an allowance, a universal income or a new form of assistance,” defended Éric Ciotti in a message to senators. The measure he defends “consists, temporarily and in a serious crisis situation, of supporting the income of the poorest farmers so that they do not leave the profession”, he explains. On France 2, he reiterated that he did not want to create a new “allocation”, specifying that his objective was that “the accumulation of all the measures would increase the income of farmers.”