A face-to-face which promises to be tense between Emmanuel Macron and the farmers
A welcoming committee of farmers slept in front of the Agricultural Show before the visit, in a minefield, of Emmanuel Macron, as the anger is now crystallizing on his person after the Elysian blunder around the invitation of the Uprisings de la Terre, an environmentalist collective reviled by many operators.
In front of the Salon in Paris, on the esplanade where the FNSEA, the majority union, is located, the night was calm. Some operators have slept on straw and the mines are tired. A group of farmers from the competing union, Rural Coordination, arrived around 6 a.m.
The Head of State will come to inaugurate the Agricultural Show, as presidents have done since Jacques Chirac, “but not like every year”warned Arnaud Rousseau, president of the FNSEA, on Friday evening, suggesting that it would not be a walk in the park sheltered from boos and demonstrations of distrust.
“It is certain that Macron risks being whistled in the aisles, but we must move forward, we must continue to discuss to get things done, concretely”confides to AFP its vice-president, Luc Smessaert, farmer in Oise.
The head of state writes on “all agricultural unions before the official opening”, Then “to reach out to all those who want to exchange, as I do every year”.
Arnaud Rousseau warned the president “that before parading and [de] to take photos, we first had to tell the farmers what they were waiting for and what they had been demanding for weeks”during a speech to his troops from the FNSEA and the allied Young Farmers (JA) union in the evening in front of the Salon, Porte de Versailles in Paris.
Arnaud Rousseau and his counterpart Véronique Le Floc’h, president of Rural Coordination, the second largest French agricultural union, still agreed to see the president – “if he can come back”added Mme The Floc’h.