What the agricultural unions expect from Michel Barnier at Matignon

Agricultural unions want to maintain pressure on the executive, nine months after the historic mobilization of farmers. The FNSEA and the Young Farmers (JA) published a joint press release on Thursday to reiterate their demands.

Agriculture is one of the major issues awaiting Michel Barnier at Matignon. Nine months after the mobilization and historic blockages of farmers, anger is still there, because the bill supposed to address it has been blocked in Parliament since the dissolution. The agricultural unions are maintaining the pressure, which is also at the heart of the first reaction of the two majority unions, the FNSEA and the Young Farmers (JA).

Agriculture must be the immediate priority, they write in a joint statement. Because it is urgent according to them. Anger is brewing on farms, farmers believe that the responses to their mobilization have not been heard. The draft framework law for food and agricultural sovereignty, intended to protect their income, rewritten after the blockages this winter, is in the Senate after the dissolution and there is no indication that the new National Assembly will take it up.

The FNSEA even wants to complete it. In the absence of a government this summer, the FNSEA published its own draft law to “undertaking in agriculture”. He calls for fewer standards, an end to pesticide bans with no alternatives, a one-stop shop to facilitate new installations. Half of the 500,000 farmers will be of retirement age by 2030.

The new Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, knows the sector well. He himself was Minister of Agriculture 15 years ago, from 2007 to 2009. That was under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, during the second government of François Fillon.

The environmental protection association Générations futures remembers a minister who stood up to the FNSEA, particularly on the Ecophyto plan for reducing pesticides, a plan which was revised in recent months following the mobilisation to ease its constraints.

Farmers’ unions therefore have mixed memories of Michel Barnier in Agriculture. They criticize him, for example, for not having fought enough with the European Commission on the CAP, on milk quotas or on the adoption in 2008 of the CAP health check, which redirected these European funds towards livestock farming. This had taken away a billion euros of aid for cereal growers, who have just experienced a catastrophic harvest.

France has just experienced its worst wheat harvest in 40 years: 26 million tonnes. This is 26% less than in 2023, according to the General Association of Wheat Producers. A shortfall estimated at 3 billion euros. Cereal producers are requesting state-guaranteed loans to cope.