While agricultural leaders in France have welcomed Michel Barnier’s appointment, they are expecting rapid responses, while anger is still simmering.
The last name will have finally been the right one. LR Michel Barnier was chosen Thursday by Emmanuel Macron for the post of Prime Minister. At 73, he already has a big political career behind him, including the Brexit negotiations for the European Union, but also, on a national scale, a notable stint at the Ministry of Agriculture in the Fillon government, between 2007 and 2009.
Michel Barnier’s major strength, according to the agricultural sector leaders we contacted, from all unions, is his good knowledge of the issues, in France, but also at the European level.
Michel Barnier appointed Prime Minister
While the current Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, is due to announce her vision for agriculture by early 2025, based on recommendations from a cross-party group of experts, “[sa] “Knowledge of the common agricultural policy is an advantage,” underlines a major player in the sector.
Since leaving the Rue de Varenne for Brussels, Michel Barnier has remained in contact with the French agricultural world, according to several sources. A sector official says that he continued to meet him regularly at the Salon de l’agriculture. Interviewed on Europe 1 in 2015, in the midst of farmers’ protests, the former minister declared that agriculture “is a social issue” and that “we must pay attention to this agricultural suffering”.
“Agriculture cannot be left to the laws of the market alone”
“He has the codes,” underlines one of our interlocutors, who describes “a fairly unifying profile without any skeletons in the closet.”
“He is not necessarily warm, but he is pleasant and respectful of everyone. He is a man of dialogue, but who holds and defends his positions. He is capable of making courageous and disruptive decisions.”
As in 2009, continues this source, when Michel Barnier, then Minister of Agriculture, decided to “deal a major blow to the terms of the CAP by transferring significant funding, which had until then been allocated to large-scale crops, particularly cereals, to livestock farmers.”
“I wanted to give the CAP an ecologically responsible and economically fairer direction,” Michel Barnier said at the time. A skilled negotiator, we are told, he “does not force the hand, but he remains firm in his positions.” Michel Barnier’s profile is rather consensual. Even on the side of the Confédération paysanne, historically anchored on the left.
If, for the union, his appointment to Matignon is a “democratic denial, in relation to the elections this summer”, it is satisfied that the man knows agriculture and European issues well. And the spokesperson for the movement, Laurence Marandola, credits him with a sentence, pronounced in 2008: “Agriculture cannot be left to the sole laws of the market”, declared the minister of the time. Now, she is waiting to be consulted quickly and to see what the new Prime Minister will propose “on prices, income and market regulation.”
Make agriculture an “immediate priority”
“We had to move forward and appoint a Prime Minister,” notes the president of the Rural Coordination. Now, “let’s build!” says Véronique le Floc’h, who is waiting to see who Michel Barnier will entrust with the Agriculture portfolio. The same urgency is expressed in the press release co-signed by the FNSEA and the Young Farmers, who, after congratulating him on his appointment, urge him to make agriculture “the immediate priority” of his government.
The players in the sector are saying it again and again at the beginning of September: anger is still simmering among operators, since the demonstrations at the beginning of the year. They deplore the fact that the measures promised by the outgoing executive have not all been taken, that the bill dedicated to them has been the victim of the dissolution of the National Assembly, and they do not rule out new actions if nothing is done to provide answers.
