how the Republicans try to weigh into the equation

Farmers’ anger is dictating the political agenda in recent days. Most of the candidates for the European elections are running to the side of a profession in distress. Wednesday noon, François-Xavier Bellamy, head of the Les Républicains list, was on a farm in the Oise.

“Support those who produce”, it will be “the great fight” European elections, according to him. While Republican senators go on the offensive, they put on the table a bill to end the crisis.

Half of the 42 measures in the bill have already been voted on by senators a year ago. The Republicans want to show that they are the first defenders of the agricultural world. Laurent Duplomb, senator from Haute-Loire, presents his priority: “Relax the normative situation. We want to create a commission to ‘weed out’ all the standards which today are stultifying and which serve no purpose.” He also proposes the abolition of the Biodiversity Office and measures to sanction agribashing.

“A form of Macronian tartuferie”

And then the government must reverse decisions deemed abusive, he says: “We are going back on subjects where we got it wrong. The example of neonicotinoids with the ban on acetamiprid – that is to say the 5th category which is today authorized throughout Europe -, the fact that today we are creating unfair competition. So we must stop being naive.”

A file emblematic of the government’s double discourse, according to Bruno Retailleau: “We also want to denounce a form of Macronian tartufery which means that in Paris, we listen to the farmers, but in Brussels, the group of Macronist deputies has continued to play against French agriculture. Let’s stop the massacre.” The leader of the Republicans says he is ready to have his text adopted by the senators but above all he seeks to put pressure on the government.