2024-01-28 10:25:58
It is the first major social crisis for the Government of Gabriel Attal, 34 years old. He youngest prime minister In the history of the Fifth Republic, it faces the discomfort of one of the most ancient economic sectors: agriculture and livestock. Less than three weeks after his appointment by President Emmanuel Macron, Attal sees his time in Matignon threatened by the growing boil in the French countryside, following in the wake of similar protests in Germany, Poland and Romania. His general policy speech, which he will deliver next Tuesday, has taken a backseat to the peasant mobilizations.
Unlike other protest movements – the yellow vest revolt, massive protests by unions against the pension reform… – Macron’s Executive faces these rural demonstrations with great caution and little gallantry. He is aware of the popularity of protests supported by 90% of French people, according to recent polls. Besides, the extreme right of Marine Le Pen, which already started as a clear favorite for the European elections in June in the face of a weakened Macronism, intends to instrumentalize themalthough he defends an agricultural model similar to the current one and which causes so much discomfort.
Green agriculture, the great sacrifice?
Immersed in a series of international trips (India, Sweden and Ukraine in February), Macron has left his new prime minister in charge —at least for the public— of the management of this crisis. Attal made a series of announcements from a farm in southwestern France on Friday to calm the outrage. This precocious leader, who has always been dedicated to politics and who grew up and was educated in the bourgeois VI arrondissement of Paris, dedicated glowing words “to those who get up every morning to feed us.”
The European unrest of farmers reaches France: “It is a question of survival”
“Agriculture is like love: you need concrete evidence,” said the prime minister. As the main concession, he announced that the Government is renouncing the progressive withdrawal of the tax subsidy for rural diesel, perceived by some of the protesters as “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” On the other hand, Attal did not propose no measure to compensate for low income of a good part of the farmers, another of the important factors that feed a deep-rooted malaise with diverse motivations. The percentage of poor peasants in France is 18%, while in the active population as a whole, it is 13%. And the average monthly income of agricultural producers is lower than the minimum wage.
Due to its desire to close the Keynesian parenthesis with which it responded to covid-19 and reduce public spending by 12 billion euros in the next two years, Macron’s Government has preferred to see peasant protests as a mobilization resulting from unrest. against the green transition and the excess of paperwork and regulations in the field. A diagnosis that is partly true, but partial. And that runs the risk of sacrifice the ecological transition of a sector responsible for 20% of CO2 emissions in France.
“Clearly insufficient” ads
“It is not just a movement of peasants who oppose the transformation of their mode of production. It seems simplistic to me to summarize it this way,” economist Maxime Combes, who is well versed in the primary sector, explains to EL PERIÓDICO. “Without the problem with the price of raw materials, farmers would not be on the streets”, adds this expert, who considers that “Macron’s Government has an important part of responsibility” in this rage in the countryside, although it goes beyond the borders of France. Although the centrist Executive approved two laws in 2018 and 2021 so that farmers could sell their products at a fair price, they are often not applied.
Attal’s advertisements were “clearly insufficient”, denounced the Confédération Paysanne, the third agricultural union and supporter of organic farming. “What has been said does not calm the anger, we must go further,” stated, for his part, Arnaud Rousseau, president of the FNSEA, the first organization in the field and much more in favor of industrial agriculture. After a Friday in which there were tens of thousands of farmers mobilized in highway closures and direct actions throughout the country, This weekend the presence of farmers occupying and blocking roads has decreased. On Saturday there were barricades with tractors in 38 of them compared to 113 the day before, according to government data.
However, the FNSEA and the Young Agricultural Workers have defended that, if they remove the blockades this weekend, it is to prepare actions next week. Together with other organizations, they have warned that on Monday starting at two noon They will try to cut off traffic on the main highways that go to Paris. They also intend to alter the functioning of Rungis, the largest wholesale market in Europe. “Let’s start a siege of the capital of an indeterminate duration”they have assured in a statement with a tremendous formula.
To avoid images of riot police beating peasants – unpleasant for French public opinion and especially for retired and conservative voters, the hard core of Macron’s electorate – the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, has asked “great restraint” to security forces. This permissiveness, however, may cause the pressure to now increase on Paris. After having forced the Executive to give in in just a week of mobilizations, the outraged farmers have the wind in their sails. And they threaten to leave Attal hanging, less than a month after his arrival in Matignon.
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