Professional elections to chambers of agriculture rarely attract the attention of the media. However, those who have just been held in January deserves more attention. For the first time, the FNSEA – rather close to the right of government – sees its contested hegemony. Faced with her, the rural coordination, a assumed subsidiary of the RN, without managing to become the first union in the sector, stands out as an essential force by becoming the majority in 14 departments. Territories where health and climatic crises weigh heavily on productions and aggravate the many ills in which farmers must face: low incomes, rarefaction of public services, often absurd standards, environmental constraints imposed by the CAP … but also- let’s recognize- The – strong reluctance to change and modernize many of them!
In reality, this ballot, much more than a simple union balance, is above all a reflection of an exponential anger which focuses on a single man: the President of the Republic. These elections were held a year after the major agricultural demonstrations which had paralyzed part of the country. At the time, the FNSEA had led negotiations with the government, obtaining first very concrete advances for the profession. But twelve months later, almost nothing has been implemented.
Irresponsible initiatives of the RN
Among the main officials of this situation, the deputies of the RN who voted censorship. Declassing on the property tax, the reform of the calculation of agricultural pensions had to wait for a new vote. Without forgetting the agricultural orientation law, promised by Gabriel Attal a year ago and offset following the fall of the government, which only arrives in the Senate. Paradoxically, voters of the agricultural world will therefore not have kept rigor to the rural coordination of irresponsible initiatives of the RN, quite the contrary. First of all because for them as for the vast majority of French people, Emmanuel Macron remains the sole responsible for political chaos by causing dissolution.
Then, because he never knew how to embody a readable agricultural policy. A year ago, faced with peasant anger, he left his Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, going up to the front. Result: an ambitious roadmap to save agriculture … but now no one to carry it out. More CAP, no more incarnation, more effort to reconnect with an agricultural world that no longer feels listened to. Finally, this vote also sanctions a President of the Republic disconnected from agricultural realities. The proof was made of this last year, at the Agricultural Show. While anger rumbled, the Elysée believed good to organize yet another “great debate” … by inviting associations whose only obsession is theAgrobashing.
This rejection is all the more disturbing since it is accompanied by an increasing rise in radicalization far from the traditional cycle “Manif-Négo-accord”. The union no longer hesitates to use abnormally violent methods to be talked about agricultural issues. A few weeks ago, did the secretary general of rural coordination not threaten to “burn on the spot” any vehicle of the French office of biodiversity entering a farm? A shock declaration in the style of yellow vests, revealing a country under tension.
A year after blockages, anger is no longer looking for an interlocutor, it no longer requires solutions as has always tried to do the FNSEA. She rejects. And she rejects a man who now symbolizes the helplessness of power. These consular elections are new proof that now each ballot, each social movement, each mobilization becomes a referendum against the President of the Republic and the opportunity to sanction it without nuance or indulgence. Suffice to say that pretending to hold out without moving until May 2027 when one is at the head of a people which in other times was regicid, is a great unconsciousness.
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