They are maintaining pressure on the executive less than two weeks before the Agricultural Show. The president of the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FNSEA) warned on Tuesday February 13 that farmers were “ready to take action again” if the concrete measures expected from the government were not there. between now and the Agricultural Show, which is due to open on February 24.
“The farmers never gave up. Everyone said: we are ready to leave if the work carried out does not meet expectations, which are very high,” declared Arnaud Rousseau on TF1, a few hours before a union meeting with Gabriel Attal in Matignon.
Ten days after the lifting of the blockages, the representatives of the main agricultural union as well as those of the Young Farmers (JA) must be received on Tuesday in Matignon by Gabriel Attal, at 4:30 p.m., in the company of the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau , and the new delegate minister, Agnès Pannier-Runacher. “The interest of this meeting with the Prime Minister is to be able to take stock, to work on very concrete measures, since we are halfway, after the announcement of emergency measures and [before ] the Agricultural Show, which will take place in eleven days,” said Arnaud Rousseau.
For his part, Emmanuel Macron will receive the Rural Coordination and the Peasant Confederation on Wednesday, before the FNSEA and the Young Farmers “next week”. As before each Agricultural Show, said the Elysée.
“We need to speed up the pace.”
The opening of the Salon, on February 24, the traditional meeting between France’s farmers and the political world, must occur as the executive tries to avoid the resumption of a movement suspended on February 1, following new government announcements. After two weeks of road blockages and sometimes tumultuous actions, the demonstrators broke camp after this third round of announcements, covering subjects as diverse as pesticides, farmers’ retirements, the simplification of standards and aid. breeding or organic farming.
But the unions do not intend to reduce the pressure. “We must accelerate the tempo,” launched the president of the FNSEA, Arnaud Rousseau, on Monday, urging the government to take action before the Salon Porte de Versailles takes place. He warned that the quality of the President of the Republic’s reception would depend on it.
“We want to see what is changing on our farms (…) When the government tells us we are going to work on a major breeding plan between now and the show and in two weeks we have no news… If from here ten days there should not have been this in-depth work, this change of software, we would be ready to go back into action”, insisted on Tuesday the cereal producer, who is also chairman of the board of directors of the large agri-food group Avril, before adding: “We can see that everyone is at work [but] if we hadn’t put this pressure on, we wouldn’t be here. »
A tight schedule for Gabriel Attal. Listing his work program on Sunday in the columns of Le Parisien, the new Prime Minister confirmed the agricultural issue among the “emergencies” of the spring, before “a summer of social progress” and “an autumn of work”.
At the Ministry of Agriculture, it is specified that the government is working on “all files”. Gabriel Attal’s announcements – with emergency measures costed at 400 million euros by Bercy – have begun to be implemented in concrete terms, it is claimed, evoking, for example, the opening since February 5 of compensation for breeders. At the local level, meetings “took place in all departmental prefectures” to “look at local decrees” and “put forward administrative simplification proposals”.
“All ministries are at work,” the Minister for Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, also said on Tuesday on Franceinfo, before delaying: “Certain subjects go back ten, twenty or thirty years. I understand an impatience which expresses the suffering of farmers (…). But we must not confuse speed with haste. »
The threat brandished by the FNSEA did not escape the opposition: Emmanuel Macron “is afraid of having a bad show, he receives [the farmers] at full speed”, denounced the vice-president of the National Rally, Sébastien Chenu , on BFM-TV and RMC, accusing the executive of having “lied” to calm anger.
Questioning of environmental measures
In addition to the Matignon meetings, the two ministers responsible for agriculture “will see each of the trade union organizations during the week”, in particular to discuss the bill on the renewal of generations, it was clarified on Monday in the cabinet of Marc Fesneau. This text, postponed to be enriched, according to the government, should be presented to the Council of Ministers “at the end of February” for a vote “by June”.
Among the stinging subjects, both for farmers and for environmental defenders, is also the monitoring of pesticide use, put back on the table on Monday. Eight environmental NGOs announced that they had left a meeting of the strategic orientation and monitoring committee (COS) of the Ecophyto plan, which was held at the Ministry of Agriculture, with the government, elected officials and representatives of farmers and the industry.
The European Commission, for its part, adopted on Tuesday, for the year 2024, a partial exemption from the fallow obligations provided for by the common agricultural policy (CAP), a key demand of recent agricultural demonstrations.
This plan, which aims to halve the use of pesticides by 2030 (compared to 2015-2017), was suspended by Mr. Attal “while it takes time to put in place a new indicator” which would replace the NODU, the main French measurement tool. A decision which satisfied the majority agricultural unions and dismayed environmental associations.
To receive CAP aid, farmers will now have to leave at least 4% of arable land in intermediate or nitrogen-fixing crops (lentils, peas, etc.) and no longer just fallow and non-productive areas (hedges, groves, ponds). …), according to a decision published Tuesday in the Official Journal. This threshold has also been lowered from 7%, initially proposed at the end of January.
