Farmers in the European Parliament?
In any case, this is the wish of Laurent Wauquiez, putative Republican candidate for the Élysée in 2027. “My wish is that we have farmers in a good position on the Republican list” in the European elections of June, the president of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes told AFP on Wednesday.
“It would be a very strong signal of our desire to defend our farmers,” added the elected official, who was finishing a three-week “agricultural tour of France” in Montigné-lès-Rairies (Maine-et-Loire) which carried out on 17 farms in the country.
Laurent Wauquiez, who rarely speaks in the national political debate, intervened for the first time in the European campaign.
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However, he did not want to confirm the name of Céline Imart, cereal farmer from Tarn, whom Le Parisien mentioned as François-Xavier Bellamy's running mate for the June 9 election, believing that it was up to party boss Éric Ciotti to make the list.
Renaissance and RN castigated
Accompanied by the deputy for Maine-et-Loire Anne-Laure Blin and the senator from Haute-Loire Laurent Duplomb, the former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy, who has still not formally revealed his ambitions for 2027, assured that LR was the only party that had defended French farmers in the European Parliament over the last five years.
“Renaissance betrayed them”, he denounced, considering that “the policy led by (Renaissance MEP) Pascal Canfin was a succession of daggers in the back of our agriculture”.
He also did not spare the head of the RN list, Jordan Bardella: “He is one of the most absentee deputies in the entire European Parliament and he only discovered the agricultural subject when the farmers were on dams” during the recent agricultural crisis.
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“For five years, he never brought concrete and operational things to bear on these subjects,” he again lamented, believing on the contrary that Xavier Bellamy and the LR were “involved and committed”.
“I consider that this is part of the duty of our Republican political family to defend agriculture and the rural world,” added Laurent Wauquiez.