The images stunned public opinion. Trampled salads, destroyed experimental greenhouses, lily of the valley plants and uprooted irrigation installations… On June 11, radical activists from the movement created two years ago on the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes attacked crops market gardeners from Nantes, accused of “grabbing the land and poisoning the water”. But the ransacking of low water and pesticide crop trials by 1,500 raging protesters has sparked outrage. The Federation of Nantes market gardeners, owner of the targeted greenhouses, filed a complaint.
And since ? “Since then, nothing”, notes, stunned, the president of the FNSEA Arnaud Rousseau, who tried to reach the Minister of the Interior. Without success. “An appointment is made in the next few days,” he says. After the violence in Sainte-Soline, Gérald Darmanin had promised the dissolution of the movement… For a month and a half, the file, placed on the table of the Prime Minister, has not progressed. And farmers are getting impatient. On the outskirts of Nantes last Sunday, the police, present in large numbers, attended the looting without intervening. The police did not make “any arrests during the action”, confirms the Ministry of the Interior, adding that an investigation is underway. If Emmanuel Macron has increased the pressure on Elisabeth Borne this week to accelerate the dissolution of the self-proclaimed “ecological” collective, Arnaud Rousseau is worried, and calls for a start.
The Point: Last weekend’s damage amounts to tens of thousands of euros in losses, and farmers are shocked. Have you been able to speak with the Minister of the Interior about this?
Arnaud Rousseau: As we speak, not yet. Appointment is made in the next few days. I chose not to speak immediately this week, for the sake of appeasement. But I want to say it forcefully: farmers have a right to respect, like everyone else, and the Republic has a duty to protect them like all citizens. I just left a federal union council, and I felt a form of unease, and incomprehension of the profession, which saw the CRS supervising the demonstrations this weekend, without intervening, as if the farmers were sub-citizens. Who could understand someone being assaulted in the street in front of the gendarmes, without them intervening? We call for calm and reason, but they will not last long without strong, rapid and concrete decisions.
Faced with increasingly violent attacks, farmers have always remained within the republican framework. But our rights must be respected. The role of the state is to protect people and property. He must also remember that when we attack farmers’ means of production, we are attacking our food sovereignty. If you can’t produce, you can’t feed. And if we don’t feed, we import.
In the Council of Ministers on June 14, Emmanuel Macron called for accelerating the dissolution of the Uprisings of the Earth collective, promised by Gérald Darmanin after the violence in Sainte-Soline. Isn’t that a strong message?
This is talk for now, and we want action! If we are not able to dissolve this movement, how to explain that we cannot intervene on their means of communication, on these innumerable calls to “dry up” the targets they designate by name? Can’t we shut down their website? The state’s responses are imprecise and timorous. I also do not accept the ambiguous postures of certain political parties, which claim that violence is not acceptable, but refuse to denounce these demonstrators. The authorities must walk the talk, and make sure things happen quickly. I say it as a form of appeal, not for help, but for reason. We succeeded in putting an end to the intrusions into the farms, a few years ago, thanks to strong court decisions which condemned the culprits to very heavy fines. What are we waiting for today? Those who act under the guise of being “whistleblowers” have a sense of total impunity.
You denounce a certain complacency with regard to these radical militants. Do their speeches carry?
Many people, who tended to support them, dissociated themselves from them, like the climatologist Valérie Masson-Delmotte. We are open to discussion on technical matters. But we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about the destruction of property! Who would agree to see their possessions destroyed, in the name of an ideology? If the frame of expression is to say, “I hold the truth, I come home, and I destroy,” then there is no form of dialogue possible. I appeal to reason. These people are looking for events to get out of hand, because it is in chaos that they will develop their anti-capitalist theses. It is incomprehensible that the forces of order passively witnessed the facts, without intervening. We are in a state of law, and there is no question of letting ourselves be abused by procrastination. I ask that the people in charge do their job. Then, I don’t want to give these people more importance than they really have. Our ambition remains to meet climate challenges, reduce our impacts and our dependencies, and ensure the sovereignty, quality and continuity of French production.
Today, impunity is total, and will lead everyone to civil war. Farmers are not sub-citizens, they must be protected and their rights reaffirmed. The FNSEA, in responsibility, calls everyone to calm and restraint. But I am obliged to add that I am not sure of holding out my troops for long. I hope that what happened on Sunday will mark the end of a form of leniency. Because an incident can happen.