A fiasco even before the opening of the Show. Emmanuel Macron announced that he was giving up holding a major debate with farmers on Saturday at the Salon de l’Agriculture, after the controversy over the invitation of an environmentalist collective, but that he would indeed inaugurate this major annual meeting and would meet with the agricultural unions beforehand.
Since day one, I have been committed to farmers and to agricultural and food sovereignty.
and France.
From the start of the current crisis, I asked the government to provide concrete responses with methodical monitoring. This is what is underway.…— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) February 23, 2024
A meeting with the unions “before the official opening of the show”
As in the days of the Yellow Vests, the Head of State was going to enter the “ring” to exchange “without filter”, for hours, with all the actors in the crisis and emerge with a new direction. But the hiccup around the invitation of the collective Earth Uprisings, known for its violent actions on agricultural issues, got the better of this great debate. “The agricultural unions (…) had wanted an open ‘debate’. They are today asking for its cancellation. Of which note”, wrote the head of state on X.
He still specifies that he will invite “all the agricultural unions before the official opening of the show” on Saturday morning. “I will be there to open it and will contact all those who want to discuss as I do every year,” he continued. A decision welcomed on Franceinfo by one of the vice-presidents of the majority agricultural union, the FNSEA, Luc Smessaert: “This is very good news. We had already told him that we did not need a debate type of Yellow Vests. Above all, we needed a President of the Republic to come and tell French farmers, ‘We support you’.”
The president of France’s leading agricultural union, the FNSEA, said Friday on BFMTV that his organization accepted Emmanuel Macron’s invitation to meet him on Saturday before the opening of the Agricultural Show. “We will respond, as we always do, to this Republican invitation,” declared Arnaud Rousseau. The president of Rural Coordination, the second largest French agricultural union, Véronique Le Floc’h, told AFP that she accepted this meeting with the president, adding simply: “if he can come back.”