How can we not blow, unnecessarily, on the embers of a social movement, which is supported by a very large majority of French people, while ensuring respect for order?
This is the balancing act that Gérald Darmanin has been doing since the start of the farmers' angry movement, almost a week ago.
It must be said that the government does not intend to repeat the errors in the management of “yellow vests”.
And shows himself to listen.
Even if it means not sending the police to lift the highway blockades and respond to the violence.
A strategy dictated by the absence of
“degradations”
, the Minister of the Interior argued a few days ago.
Guest of 8 p.m. on TF1 Thursday evening, the tenant of Place Beauvau wanted to dot the i’s.
“We don’t respond to suffering by sending CRS,”
thundered France’s top cop.
“Do farmers have the right to demand and are they suffering? Yes. Should we let them do it without sending the CRS? Yes, as Minister of the Interior and at the request of the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister, I let them do it,”
Gérald Darmanin simply clarified.
A voluntary inaction which is justified, according to him, by a key element:
“Are the farmers attacking the police and the gendarmes, are they attacking and setting fire to public buildings?
This is not the case."
A rather partial view of the damage suffered by the prefectures of Agen on Wednesday and Bordeaux again this Thursday.
Recalling that he is above all an elected representative on the ground, the minister said he was
“accustomed to the legitimate attacks of those who suffer, who do not earn a lot of money, and who work very hard.”
Read also Farmers: fearing a conflagration, deputies try to calm the discontent
A red line fixed to prefects
While EELV senator from Paris Yannick Jadot accused the government of responding differently to the actions of climate activists than to those of agricultural unions, saying that
"if environmentalists did a thousandth of what is happening today, they would be in prison and condemned”
, the Minister of the Interior brushed aside this attack.
“There are no double standards.
Farmers work and when they want to demonstrate that they have demands, they must be heard
,” stipulated Gérald Darmanin.
Who
“reminded”
the prefects of a red line:
“If public buildings, police officers and gendarmes, prefecture agents were attacked, obviously we will intervene.”
A hammered and repeated optimist which is largely based on the announcements to be made by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Friday in Haute-Garonne, intended to appease the anger of the agricultural world.