“It’s not because we didn’t receive an invitation that we weren’t part of the process,” explains a spokesperson for Earth Uprisings

The Earth Uprisings persist and sign: while Emmanuel Macron insisted on Saturday at the Agricultural Show that he “never thought” of inviting them to the debate he wanted to organize with farmers, a spokesperson for the collective claims that the executive has “backpedaled”.

Visiting the Agricultural Show, Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed on Saturday February 24 that the Earth Uprising collective had not been invited to participate in the major debate initially planned.

There was no formal invitation sent to the collective, Florian Lemerle, spokesperson for the Uprisings of the Earth, admitted to franceinfo on Sunday, but “it’s not because we didn’t receive an invitation that we weren’t in the process”. For him, the government did consider inviting them but it “backpedaled, seeing that things were going to go badly”.

“Emmanuel Macron said that he had never thought of initiating an invitation to the uprisings of the Earth to this great debate. However, what we see is that it was announced at a press conference [jeudi dernier]that Marc Fesneau [le ministre de l’Agriculture]the next morning said it was an invitation which was regrettable“, specifies Florian Lemerle.

“A deception, a masquerade”

He adds that on Thursday, “several executives from Europe Ecologie-Les Verts told us that ministerial offices had contacted them to obtain the telephone numbers of our spokespersons to invite us to the big debate.” For Florian Lemerle, “Just because we didn’t receive an invitation doesn’t mean we weren’t in the process.”

Friday, the Élysée assured that “the Earth Uprisings were neither invited nor contacted”pleading a “error made during press interview ahead of the event”.

Invitation or not, the collective would not have participated, assures Florian Lemerle: “We are already debating with the farmers. We said that it was a hoax, that we would not participate in that, in this charade which only had the objective of extinguishing the current agricultural rebellion without providing real answers.”