This is the 1,000 euro question, if not more given the turn of events: who, at the Elysée, had the funny idea of angering the farmers – more than they already were – by inviting the Earth Uprisings to the “great debate” supposed to open the Agricultural Show? At the Château, we saw fit to place the blame on journalists with poorly listening ears, then we conceded “an error”. But who the hell? Some people whisper that the idea came from two advisors, one in charge of agriculture, Matthias Ginet, the other, his superior, Benoît Faraco, head of the “Ecology, agriculture, energy, transport, housing center” , a former close friend of Nicolas Hulot, from the time he was Minister of Ecology. The very one who managed to keep Hulot from causing misfortune. “An environmental activist from the start,” complains an advisor to the executive, “who knows how to unravel draft laws in the service of his ideals.”
Or perhaps it is one of those “disruptive” ideas that Emmanuel Macron has had the secret of since the first day of his mandate, and which succeeded during the time of the yellow vests. At the time, we praised “the president’s show”, so why not replay it? “The truth lies between the two”, we whisper to the government, where we have waited all day to know on which foot to dance. Will go, won’t go?
Emmanuel Macron dreamed of a Gaullian “I understand you” in front of an agricultural world not really satisfied with the first announcements made by Gabriel Attal in January, but above all tired by the inflation of government communication. Here he is on the verge of finding the door closed to the living room, under the threat of whistles and other jeers. Even François Hollande never risked such a brutal reception. The FNSEA, a majority union that is not normally bellicose towards the government, has even turned its back on it. “The agricultural unions wanted this show not to be ‘a show like any other’. They wanted an open ‘debate’. They are now asking for its cancellation. Of which note” wrote the president on -Twitter), blaming agricultural organizations.
Western
He will still go to Porte de Versailles, Saturday February 24, from 8 a.m. to try to hang on to the branches. But they are getting thinner and thinner, even on the verge of breaking. Agriculture, one of the president’s “reserved areas” such as National Education, continues to get bogged down in a crisis that seems endless. “We live in a country where farmers can no longer live on the fair price paid,” Emmanuel Macron already noted in 2017 during a speech in Rungis. An observation made, as is often the case, very early on but the issues have never been resolved. And over the years, farmers have been asked to do more: feed France, feed a Europe where competition is a Western (with its unfair standards and all-powerful large-scale distribution) and, also, save the planet.
A not impossible equation but one that Emmanuel Macron has never managed to resolve, setting up a competition between advisors, cited above, honest activists of the ecological cause, and ministers, fervent defenders of an aging agricultural model but from which the peasants do not have the capacity to give up. One at the same time? No, paralysis. The president, who dreamed of “reconciling France”, has just failed to bring the agricultural world, environmental NGOs and mass distribution to the table; three universes that have been staring at each other for too long. A failure ? No, a fiasco.
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