Europe is ‘failing farmers’ over import controls, says former Macron ally

‘Once we’ve set these objectives, the question is: how do we get there? This vision is missing’

THE European Commission is failing farmers by dragging its feet on imposing the same environmental norms on imports as it does on the continent, France’s former agriculture minister has warned.

France receives about €10billion in subsidies per year through the Common Agricultural Policy and has enough farmland to be self-sufficient.

Yet it imports cheap Chinese black wheat to make its famed Breton galettes, Canadian seeds treated with pesticides banned in the EU to make Dijon mustard, and huge quantities of Brazilian chicken full of antibiotics that are off-limits for European poultry farmers.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Julien Denormandie, one of Emmanuel Macron’s closest allies, said that while he was staunchly pro-european, this sort of contradiction meant he “totally understood” the farmers’ revolts that have roiled France and other European countries in recent months.

The EU’S draconian agriculture standards only worked if they were also applied to imports, he said, adding that the European Commission had rebuffed his efforts while in government to introduce so-called “mirror clauses”.

His remarks echoed those of British farmers who last week descended on Westminster with 150 tractors to vent fury at the government for allowing cheap imports made using chemicals and methods that are banned in the UK.

Mr Denormandie, 43, was among Mr Macron’s first devoted supporters when he ran for president in 2017 and was agriculture minister from 2019-22.

Faced with the Commission’s obstinance over banning Brazilian poultry injected with “growth” antibiotics – only allowed to treat sick animals in the EU – he used a decree to ban such meat anyway in France.

He also tried to push the commission to measure the expected impact on

farmers of its Green Deal to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 per cent by 2030, an issue that became a major bone of contention for farmers in the Netherlands and elsewhere.

The emissions targets “led to a reduction in European agriculture production of between 7-15 per cent, a rise in food prices and imports”, he said.

He complained that while the EU is good at setting targets in terms of protecting the environment, when it comes to creating “production targets in terms of cereals, proteins, we don’t have any”. He added: “Once we’ve set these two objectives, the question is how do we get there? This vision is missing.”

He left politics to join a carbon data start-up called Sweep in 2022. He has since written a book where he forewarned of a brewing farmers’ revolt in a chapter called “Le monde à l’envers” – the world’s turned upside down – which later became a farmers’ rallying cry.

Farming is a key issue in upcoming European Parliament elections, with

the hard-right National Rally currently polling to beat the Macron camp.

Last week, the EU went some way to answering farmers’ complaints by loosening controls on farms and watering down pesticide and environmental constraints, such as the obligation to keep 4 per cent of farmland fallow.

Mr Denormandie was sceptical about what National Rally could realistically offer farmers to improve their situation. He said: “It’s always easier to say, as populists do, we’re going to destroy everything with simplistic lies than to build through creative efforts.” Like Mr Macron, he pointed to the “deep-rooted collusion between the French far-right and a Russian regime that invaded Ukraine and kills its opponents”.

Beyond Marine Le Pen’s proximity to Mr Putin and her party’s loan from a bank with links to the Kremlin, he pointed to National Rally’s refusal to vote in the European Parliament on a resolution denouncing the conditions in which Alexei Navalny was detained.

‘It’s easier to say, as populists do, we’re going to destroy everything with simplistic lies’