They run, they scream, they bump and jostle, they stumble before the placid gaze of the ruminating cattle. Saturday February 24, in pavilion number one, barely eight hours and already the president’s men gave in, although helped by a few police officers and the security services. A crowd of angry farmers have managed to force the doors of the Porte de Versailles exhibition center and are rushing towards the official entrance, where Emmanuel Macron is expected. In the indefinable crush, a group collapses on a terrified goat in its small enclosure. Her breeder, with tears in her eyes, screams to be freed. “Macron, we came to say hello!” shouts a breeder in a yellow cap from Rural Coordination, one of the most vindictive unions, with his fist in the air. An injured person was evacuated by the police who had arrived in the meantime, the CRS and mobile gendarmes in large numbers. They arrest a few troublemakers and lock them in a wooden shed, the entrance to which is blocked with a load of pallets.
Thus began the sixtieth edition of the Agricultural Show, in an outbreak of violence “never seen before” in the organizer’s memory. Upstairs, in a room hidden from view where he breakfasts with representatives of the agricultural unions, the President of the Republic has no idea of the confusion that reigns down here, as if cut off from the world. He hopes to calm things down after two days of extreme tensions between the Élysée and the farmers, marked by the idea of a “great debate” where even the Earth Uprisings, an ecological organization renowned for its violent actions, had been invited. An insult in the eyes of the unions, including the very powerful FNSEA which offers a dismissal. This is the great debate – a method that the head of the Élysée particularly appreciates when he has to get out of an impasse – stillborn. “I completely deny this information. Totally. I never thought of issuing such an invitation, the president said a little later in front of journalists. This whole story has made me angry to a point that you cannot can’t imagine.”
Reality show
How to hang on to the branches? Emmanuel Macron, trapped: leaving the Salon so early would be an admission of failure, but wandering there and getting egg on the head, if not worse, would be just as fatal. Around the breakfast table with the union leaders, lively discussions, according to one of the participants, which jostle an Emmanuel Macron who scribbles complaints on index cards. He did not come empty-handed, but “not with magical promises either”, he warns before hammering home a measure already announced by his Prime Minister Gabriel Attal: the recognition of agriculture as a fundamental interest of the nation . Not enough to convince farmers. So, he draws from his bag the “floor prices”, an idea already proposed by the left in the National Assembly but rejected by its majority and which its Minister of Agriculture nevertheless judged “demagogic” a month earlier. These “floor prices” will be based on production cost indicators for each sector (poultry, milk, beef, etc.) and should allow farmers to make a living from their production, but Europe, a land of heightened agricultural competition, might not view this new clause favorably.
It was only when leaving the glass breakfast room that Emmanuel Macron became aware of the state of extreme tension which reigned a little further down. It’s ten o’clock, and the Salon should have opened its doors an hour ago. In the bays of pavilion 1, under the worried eye of police chief Laurent Nunez, companies of CRS and mobile gendarmes manage as best they can to keep the angry farmers at bay. Cattle are moved from their enclosures so that the ever-increasing number of gendarmes can take position. The hall, where the Norman cow Oreillette, muse of the living room, waits patiently in her wooden shed with her comrades, has been transformed into a fortress from which no one leaves or enters. Inside, exhibitors, law enforcement and journalists. A reality show over which he has little control. Outside, on the avenue, nearly 22,000 people are growing impatient. The director of the Salon, Arnaud Lemoine, confides his sadness to his peers, and whispers in the ear of Laurent Nunez that a presidential stroll in such conditions would be “a bad idea”. The risk is great, the police chief knows it and informs Emmanuel Macron who intends to stay there and show no sign of weakness. Being whistled and booed doesn’t scare him. “I don’t care,” he croons in front of the journalists.
Catharsis
With his back to the wall, Emmanuel Macron improvises to the great dismay of his advisors who are struggling to keep up. The president wants to be alone on stage. The unions didn’t want his big debate? They will still have it! Let us bring him a delegation of grumpy farmers of all union persuasions, those ready to fight it out, face-to-face. Confident, he is convinced he can put them in his pocket, turn them around like the mayors were during the great national debate during the time of the yellow vests. All he needs is time, at least two hours of open discussions. And what does it matter if we delay the inauguration of the Show. The news channels continue to tune in live and broadcast the exchange, vigorously. Farmers are not mayors, interrupting the president’s speech with “shh, I’m talking.” Suicides, standards, animal welfare, Europe, Ukraine… All the subjects are covered. “I almost took action in August because I don’t earn a cent,” fumes a poultry farmer, his voice drowned in emotion. “It’s my wife who supports me and I a fifteen-year-old kid. Do you think it makes me happy to go up to the Salon and be there?” He brandishes his phone in front of the head of state’s face, which displays his bank account in the red.
“I crushed thistles but not at the right time, and I got 28,000 euros in fines, do you think that’s normal?” one shouts. Another, pointing his finger at the president, insists: “We don’t want aid! We don’t want aid! We want a remunerative price!” Emmanuel Macron takes the blows but does not return them. He dropped the jacket, pulled up his shirt arms… He wants to go through that. “He’s looking to get hit to get out better. It’s cathartic for the farmers,” translates an advisor.
The tension will not subside over the course of the day, and Emmanuel Macron, amid boos and whistles, will end up inaugurating the Salon, several hours late. Wherever he goes, cohorts of white-hot farmers will follow him. “We have to save the Salon. The people who are yelling there, they have a political project, the guys can continue, I know where it comes from,” he torpedoes in a barely disguised message to the National Rally. He has only one objective: to spend the most time there and thus believes he is showing that he is not afraid of being heckled. In 2019, he spent nearly fourteen hours and thirty minutes among the cows. “I am on your side, with you, all the time,” he repeats to the peasants during the debate. Perched on a chair, its official photographer adjusts a light to direct it towards the face of the surrounded president. Click click.
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