The president of the FNSEA agricultural union, Arnaud Rousseau, in Paris, February 13, 2024 (AFP/Archives/GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT)
The boss of the majority agricultural union FNSEA called on Thursday Emmanuel Macron to express his vision for agriculture “without further delay”, after several months of mobilization of the profession.
“The President of the Republic seems to hesitate to make an appointment, the one he had promised us at the Agricultural Show, believing that the situation was not ripe,” underlined Arnaud Rousseau at the closing of the 78th congress annual union event in Dunkirk.
“What about the ambition of the Head of State? The speech (of 2017, Editor’s note) of moving upmarket has lived,” he added. “May he give us his vision without further delay.”
The head of the FNSEA also called on the government to “regain control of its administration” in order to more quickly implement measures in favor of farmers.
“It is unacceptable for a month to pass between a ministerial decision and the dissemination of the instruction to the territorial administrative levels,” he declared before the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, who came to the Congress.
“I know the delays”, “a certain number of reluctances” in the national and European administrative systems, replied the government official shortly after, both applauded and slightly booed.
But “we have moved forward like never before,” he said before detailing the various actions undertaken, as he has often done in recent weeks.
Before his intervention, in a room full of delegates with numerous grievances against the government, a moderator had called on the public to respect the minister’s speech.
During the speech, members held up posters “Livestock plan”, “Produce more and live better”, “Freedom to use our meadows”, distributed in advance by the union.
At the back of the room, some people made noise by tapping on the floor. Around the platform, activists wore the names of their regions upside down, in the vein of the reversals of city signs which marked the mobilization of the FNSEA and its ally Young Farmers (JA).
– “Do not give up” –
“Rarely, in the memory of a trade unionist, have so many subjects been opened up so quickly” at the end of a social movement, recognized Arnaud Rousseau.
“No one believed until a few months ago that we would be able to move the lines so quickly at the European level,” said Arnaud Gaillot, the president of the JA.
But “there are also still plenty of subjects that we must not let go of”, he added, mentioning in particular water, pesticides and especially the way to facilitate the installation of young operators. Maybe some people don’t want to farm their entire career, he noted.
The 78th FNSEA congress has been held since Tuesday at the Dunkirk convention center, under the guard of a discreet deployment of law enforcement. The events organized by the majority union are regularly the target of demonstrations by environmental organizations which denounce the model supported by the FNSEA, described as “productivist” to the detriment of nature and deemed unsuitable in the face of climate change.
During a round table, representatives of several European agricultural unions shared common reasons for dissatisfaction, citing bureaucracy, environmental standards, competition from imported products, the influence of environmentalist lobbies in the upper echelons of power, decisions dictated by “ideology” rather than agronomy.
The revolt of the peasant world in many European countries was born largely from the accumulation of texts “which created among farmers a feeling of regulatory suffocation”, thus estimated Christiane Lambert, president of the Committee of Professional Agricultural Organizations of the European Union and former boss of the FNSEA.
While the congress is also a moment of galvanizing the troops less than a year before the professional elections in France, Christiane Lambert targeted the unions which seek to crack the hegemony of the FNSEA and the JA.
“Yellow flags on our left (the Peasant Confederation, Editor’s note), yellow flags on our right, which talk a lot but act little (the Rural Coordination, Editor’s note), the best possible path, that of efficiency, it lies between these two extremes,” she said, also calling on farmers to vote in the European elections in June.
“It’s very easy to say that everything is Europe’s fault. But Europe is ours to make,” underlined the Belgian Mariannne Streel, president of the Walloon Federation of Agriculture. .
© 2024 AFP
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