“The cocktail is explosive”: faced with the anger of farmers, the executive seeks to defuse the crisis

2024-01-22 01:00:39

This weekend, the prefects were not only ordered to meet in “each department”, farmers and their representatives “in the face of tensions and to prevent any further risk of disturbances to public order”. The email sent to them, Friday January 19 in the evening by the Ministers of the Interior and Agriculture, also included this instruction: send to the government, before “Sunday 7 p.m.”, “a report” of their exchanges mentioning “the exhaustive list of organizations and representatives met”, “the demands collected” or even “the inventory of upcoming gatherings or protest actions (declared or not)”.

The rest after this ad

These instructions passed at the express request of Emmanuel Macron, like the way in which the government has multiplied outings and declarations this weekend, say a lot about the concern – “The wind of panic”, even says a minister – which is is seized by the executive: the fear of a jacquerie.