Debate contributions by Valérie DELOGE

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, lumpy skin disease – the DNC – is not just a health crisis, it is a crisis of method. In France, healthy vaccinated herds have been slaughtered, and we now need to step back from these brutal methods of systematic slaughter. On the ground, breeders mostly see rigid, disconnected and brutal decisions. Farmers cannot be told that they need to vaccinate and then told that vaccination does not protect against slaughter. You can't ask them for confidence when the rules change at the worst moment. This crisis reveals a broader problem: vaccine dependence, a lack of anticipation, a lack of dialogue and respect for our farmers, who can no longer suffer yet another injustice. Protecting animal health, yes, but without sacrificing farmers or their working tools: This is what the European Union needs to hear today.

Madam President, Commissioner, this text on simplifying the CAP finally confirms what we have been denouncing for a long time: the accumulation of standards, controls, and the gradual remoteness from the realities on the ground – to the detriment of French farmers. The introduction of a single annual control per holding is a step in the right direction. It is a simple, concrete and long-awaited measure that can help restore a minimum of trust between farmers and the administration. However, of course, this progress remains limited. Simplification cannot be reduced to late technical adjustments. It must be part of a long-term change of direction based on pragmatism and respect for national realities. The European Commission bears direct responsibility for the bureaucratic asphyxiation faced by our farmers. She, who has multiplied rules, conditionalities and sanctions, is now discovering the damage she has caused herself. No, farmers do not need a Commission to monitor them, but a Commission to let them work.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, it is deeply anachronistic that we still have to debate the breeding of animals for their fur. We are talking here about minks, foxes, chinchillas locked all their lives in tiny cages, unable to express any natural behavior. This breeding generates suffering, stress, mutilations and has become morally indefensible. It does not meet any food or vital economic needs. It is a breeding of pure profit, disconnected from the essential needs of our societies and based on avoidable animal suffering. In addition, health risks in mink farms have demonstrated the real risk of transmission of zoonoses, resulting in viral reservoirs for global health. Today, 14 Member States have already banned this practice and Europe cannot stand back or accept a blatant inconsistency imposing ever-increasing standards on traditional breeders, while tolerant of a chain based on practices of another age. Economically, this activity is in decline, unsustainable and weighs on public finances. Countries, such as France, have turned the page and embarked on transitions to truly sustainable and value-creating activities. Fur, derived from animals bred solely for their fur, no longer makes sense. It is time to ban these farms and to accompany the few actors concerned towards models that respect animals as well as society. Europe must be exemplary. Let us put an end to this barbaric practice of another time.

Madam President, Commissioner, we are talking about industry, but we are also talking about our agriculture, which now also pays the price for European decisions. By taxing Chinese electric vehicles without negotiation, Brussels has triggered an immediate response against our exports of French cognac and pork. Result: a sharp fall in sales and, with it, the very concrete threat of the loss of thousands of jobs in our rural territories. Despite the negotiations conducted by Mme von der Leyen, no exemptions, no specific protection, no safety net for our producers. So I ask a simple question: How can the Commission claim to defend the interests of our agriculture if it lets our sectors of excellence serve as bargaining chips in a trade war? To accept this is to recognise Europe's inability to protect our farmers, our producers and our exports of French cognac and pork.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen of the Commission, since July I have been among the farmers in the demonstrations in Brussels and Strasbourg. They all gave me the same message: "Tell them that we no longer want their decisions that kill us." Today, I am passing it on word for word. Farmers do not want your new CAP, they do not want Ukraine to join the EU and they also do not want the Mercosur Treaty. Will you finally hear them? You are sacrificing our agriculture. No, the food sovereignty of our nations is not a line of accounting! Your budget is neither strategic nor fair: He's brutal. The Commission must review its budgetary copy. Not a patching up, but a total overhaul that protects those who feed us. Europe can survive the absence of technocrats, it will not survive the absence of farmers. And I'm here to make sure you don't forget it.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I come from Burgundy-Franche-Comté. In my region, we raise Bresse chicken, Charolais beef and refine the County. At home, a steak or sausage is a product of animal origin. There's no such thing as a vegetable steak. It is an invention of above ground communicators who want to give a natural varnish to ultra-processed products. Those who claim to defend the planet do not know the earth. They despise breeders and promote industrial products based on imported soybeans, dyes and additives. Do you think that's ecology? The human being is an omnivore. It developed thanks to a diet made from meat, eggs or milk. Replacing this with artificial proteins or dyes is denying our nature. Eating quality meat is healthy and responsible. It is to celebrate our gastronomy and our terroirs. True ecology values localism and supports breeders rather than lobbies. Sounds good.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, under the guise of environmental protection, Brussels is building a new technocratic gas plant: common chemical data platform, reallocation of powers between agencies and so on. All this is part of the same punitive ideology: turn every substance into a suspect and every exploitation into a culprit. In France, the National Agency for Health Security has just banned 17 copper-based fungicides that are essential to organic viticulture, this organic that you have put so much forward and which now no longer meets your criteria and your delusions. What the Commission wants to extend through these three texts is once again a logic of complex federalism, which weighs everything down, but does not protect anyone. The Commission continues to destroy our sectors, to undermine our agricultural sovereignty and even now our scientific sovereignty. Europe must choose reason, common sense and proportion. Because by wanting to ban everything, you will end up banning production.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the report before us illustrates a worrying and increasingly worrying trend. This drift is that of the Green Deal, which increasingly occupies the mental and political space of the centrists in Parliament. Cohesion policy, whose raison de vivre is to support the economy of our territories, has now been transformed into a political instrument of the European Commission's Green Deal. The Just Transition Fund is becoming conditional on ideological criteria, and the vision of this report is nothing more than the transformation of our regions into a centralised Brussels bureaucracy. The real just transition is the one that supports our farmers and our rural territories, without ideology, by supporting innovation on the ground, food sovereignty and the lowering of standards, not the one that conditions our funds to worrying drifts, ever more worrying.

Mr President, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was created to guarantee Europe its food sovereignty and to provide farmers with a dignified income. It has enabled the self-sufficiency of our nations and the development of our campaigns. It's our food shield. The European Commission is betraying this legacy. By drowning agriculture in a global fund combining cohesion, fisheries and even defence, it is emptying the CAP of its substance. Agriculture is no longer a strategic priority. Tomorrow, with Ukraine's entry into the European Union, it will be worse. Our farmers will face unsustainable competition. The CAP must not disappear. It must remain a strong, autonomous policy, faithful to its mission: feed people, protect farmers and support young people who settle. Ladies and gentlemen of the Commission, when you weaken the CAP, you threaten our food sovereignty, our campaigns and the future of our food security.

Madam President, Commissioner, the CAP is a DNA, the CAP is a spirit. Its DNA is that of the first European nations, which have built a space of peace for their peoples. Its spirit is the PAC spirit. Since 1962, this spirit accompanies our farmers at the pace of their development with a main mission: guarantee them a fair standard of living and feed our people, so as not to depend on third countries. Today, the European Commission is choosing not to substantially increase the CAP budget. This choice is to flout the spirit of the CAP. Worse still: not substantially increasing this budget while funding our farmers' direct competitors, as illustrated by last week's €15 million allocation to South African vineyards, is trampling on the very spirit of the CAP. The French know this well: A budget reveals a policy. You therefore tell them that your agricultural policy is not that of the start, but that of the local area.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Commission is today presenting its strategies for stockpiling emergency stocks in the face of threats to our European peoples. The objective is necessary, but it requires strong political vigilance. These stocks should not be a mere technical measure. They must embody our food sovereignty. Storing within our borders means reducing our dependence, it means strengthening our resilience, it means securing our supplies, it means protecting our old continent. Our farmers must be at the heart of this strategy. They are the guarantors of our food security, and it is not by sacrificing them once again, as with the Mercosur agreement, that we will build a sustainable model. These stocks must benefit our producers, not those on the other side of the Atlantic, for whom you have had no representative mandate. Europe must stand up for those who feed it and meet this demand.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the European Commission is today presenting a new pact for pollinators. The observation is shared by all. Bees, syrphs, butterflies are disappearing at an alarming rate. This decline is undermining our agriculture, food sovereignty and biodiversity in Europe. But on closer inspection, this text reflects above all the usual flaws of Brussels technocracy: objectives disconnected from agricultural realities, an avalanche of directives and an ever more massive transfer of responsibilities from the Member States to the European Union. French farmers are asked to give up certain treatments, to integrate flower strips, to diversify their crops and it is a good thing if we accompany them. But meanwhile, we continue to shamelessly import agricultural products from countries that use banned substances at home. Where's the consistency? Where's the justice? Let's be clear about protecting pollinators, it's also about defending the future of our agriculture. It is not a question of choosing between bees and farmers, but of getting out of this logic of punishment and hypocrisy. Pollution that threatens pollinating insects doesn't just come from the fields. It also comes from the air we breathe, persistent pollutants, microplastics, heavy metals and a cocktail effect of chemicals whose interactions the European Union does not yet seriously measure. These are all factors that weaken insects, but also human health. And here the Commission's text remains timid. It deals at length with pesticides, but almost nothing is said about the impact of large industrial areas, air pollution or the overall chemical load. Farmers must not become scapegoats for a globalised production system that is beyond any control. It is time to change your software, take inspiration from the Member States that are the most virtuous in this area, such as France. Forget your vision in a silo and instead think about a global approach to invisible pollutants. Beyond phytosanitary products, the whole question of the quality of our air must arise. Support farmers who have already become aware of the problem and already work to protect habitats from pollinators. Encourage research on alternatives to chemical inputs so that our farmers are not left without solutions. It is time to defend both our farmers and biodiversity with realistic, coherent and sovereign policies.

Mr President, while France imports more than 30% of the meat it consumes, Macron and von der Leyen want to open Europe's doors wide to products from South America that do not meet our standards. The agreement with Mercosur is an economic, ecological and strategic absurdity. Macron plays a double game: He claims to defend our agriculture while saying he is ready to sign the agreement on the condition of a few safeguard clauses. Crumbs. The reality is relentless: French meat production is collapsing and herds have fallen by 10% in ten years. Meanwhile, von der Leyen's European Commission continues its forcing without listening to people or respecting agricultural balances. As the Brazilian president said, France's voice no longer counts. I say it forcefully: I am against the agreement with Mercosur. We need to win back our productions, give back a future to our young people, simplify the rules. What is needed is consistency and respect for those who feed us. I defend without fail and with determination our breeders, pillars of our food sovereignty.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the European Union is really a weather vane that changes its mind all the time. On the one hand, it is a question of integrating the CAP, the main fund for the countryside, into the overall budget of the European Union, which will reduce it. On the other hand, today we are discussing the use of cohesion funds, which are already in high demand, for rural areas. With such contradictory signals, how to trust? For years, European policies have focused on metropolises and urban areas, leaving our countryside emptying and our farms disappearing. It is finally only at the moment when urban dwellers rediscover the countryside, at the turn of teleworking, that we are again interested in these areas. You claim today that you want to help us. How can we support farmers and community-based services, because they are the ones who support these areas? Stop imposing on us your green ideology that deprives us of our means of transport. Become lucid again and learn to respect us.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am a sheep farmer in Saône-et-Loire. Like many field professionals, I know the reality of animal transportation, which requires rigor and responsibility. As a member of the Animal Welfare Intergroup in the European Parliament, of course, I love my animals, I care for them, I feed them. I work with competent transporters, respectful of our animals. What the European Union is preparing with its reform of animal transport is yet another avalanche of totally disconnected standards, a text dictated by ideologues who know nothing about our professions, but claim to teach us how to exercise them. Magical ideas, imagined in the offices of Brussels, far, far from the reality on the ground. While we control the pauses and temperatures to the second or to the nearest degree, nobody says anything about the animals imported from the end of the world, raised without rules, thanks to your sacrosanct free trade. Hypocrisy has its limits. Yes, we must punish abuses and penalize those who mistreat animals, but, I tell you, there is no question of sacrificing our sectors and weakening our French farmers and transporters.

Mr President, some of our compatriots are the forgotten of social Europe. I am thinking in particular of those who make us live, in our countryside, that is to say, especially young people: Younger generations no longer want to take over family farms for lack of prospects. How can we blame them when we see the crushing burdens, the infernal bureaucracy and the incomes that no longer even allow us to live decently? Europe must stop encouraging this destructive model. We need to ensure fair remuneration for young farmers and simplify access to support to encourage settlement. We need to upgrade the role of young women, which is essential. We must revitalize our territories by developing infrastructure, public services and digital technology in order to reduce rural exodus. Our villages should no longer be deserts, but places of the future where it is possible to work and start a family. Social Europe must be the one that protects and gives hope in our countryside. I would like to conclude by supporting Marine Le Pen, the victim this week of a purely political conviction. The people of Europe deserve a voice that defends them. You won't shut us up.

Madam President, in the face of the economic and geopolitical challenges threatening our continent, the European Commission has found a disconcerting answer: a survival kit to last 72 hours in the event of a crisis. Rather than put an end to the Green Deal, which strangles our farmers, Brussels prefers to maintain a climate of fear. Instead of strengthening our economy and sovereignty, it infantilizes citizens with recommendations worthy of a Hollywood scenario. War is not a game. Jordan Bardella recalled: we want a Europe of peace, security and sovereignty. Yet Brussels is working hard to weaken our nations to impose its federalism. Our farmers, suffocated by absurd economic standards, and our businesses, subject to unfair competition, are now in survival mode. A real survival kit is a strong economy, a competitive industry and protected borders. I also wanted to give my full support to Marine Le Pen, shamefully condemned for political reasons. It is a sad day for democracy, but it is only a matter of time before we come to power to give the people of Europe the voice they deserve.

Mr President, Commissioner, once again the European Commission is presenting a vision for the future of agriculture that does not meet the expectations of European farmers. Farmers want to live off their work, thanks to a decent income; But most of your proposals focus on aid and diversification of activities, without offering them any guarantee. Farmers want less bureaucracy; you prefer to multiply environmental standards and administrative obligations. Farmers want a strong and sovereign sector; We see that you remain subject to the dogma of free trade and globalisation, which is harmful to our agriculture. As for your response to the need to attract young people and women, it boils down to the establishment of plans, platforms and observatories, in short, a gas plant. It is not with thirty-page documents that the plates are filled. When are you going to come out of empty promises and come up with something concrete? Commissioner, the future of agriculture in the coming years seems bleak to me.

Madam President, this free trade agreement between the European Union and South America is in fact a threat to our agriculture, our environment and our economic sovereignty. This agreement puts our farmers in direct competition with products whose environmental and health standards are much less strict. You are sacrificing our European sectors, already in crisis, to sell your German cars. Mercosur promotes an economic model based on intensive export and destruction of ecosystems. It weakens our sovereignty by flooding our markets with low-cost products, it destroys local sectors and weakens our producers to the benefit of multinationals. The agreement with Mercosur is not progress, it is economic and environmental regression. It is urgent to reject it and to defend a fair, sustainable and local agriculture. Be aware that a farmer commits suicide every two days in France. I believe that, by signing this agreement, the Commissioners,me von der Leyen and the deputies who sign it will be the last nail that closes their coffin. (The speaker refused blue card questions from Marie-Pierre Vedrenne and Manon Aubry.)

Mr President, with an ageing population and a society waiting for quality care, the health sector should be a priority. However, in France, it is estimated that there is a shortage of about 22,000 professionals in hospitals, all professions combined. In the liberal sector, offices close in turns and 30% of the population now lives in a medical desert. As for the personal care sector, there are nearly 25,000 vacancies that are still difficult to fill. A few years ago, in the midst of the COVID crisis, these jobs were essential. Medical staff were promised upgrades, support and salary increases. Five years later, what remains of your good promises? Nothing. These professions of care, however critical, remain poorly considered, underpaid and with untenable schedules. It is time for this to change; however, the answer must not come from our disconnected Europe, which does not even have competence in health matters, but from our nations. You can count on us to finally remedy this situation.

Mr President, a new scandal is splattering the European institutions. The European Commission has funded so-called environmental NGOs to lobby for the Green Deal. This green deal, symbol of punitive ecology, wants to impose more standards, restrict farmers and businesses and ban thermal engines in 2035. Millions of euros of public money have been used through the LIFE programme and distributed to lobbies. Objective: influencing decisions of the European Parliament and MEPs, manipulating debates and toughening green legislation. The Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr Hansen, embodies this drift. In charge of preparing a vision on agriculture and food, he consults Greenpeace, WWF, BirdLife. But where are the farmers? Who listens to those who feed us? While these groups dictate agricultural policy, the real actors on the ground are despised, ignored. Europe does not have to be governed by lobbies who produce nothing, but who want to control everything. Friends of Mme Von Der Leyen, who have never sown a grain of wheat or produced a litre of milk, do not have to impose their utopia on us. This scandal is reminiscent of other cases, such as Qatargate or the troubled funding of Islamist associations close to the Muslim Brotherhood. Stop, Brussels must be held accountable! The EPPO and the anti-fraud authorities must shed full light on these cases. We won't let go of anything.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, animal welfare is now one of our concerns, and that is a good thing. We all have in mind these animals raised in disastrous, sick and abused conditions. It is therefore commendable to want to put an end to the abuses. However, let me express some scepticism, because, you see, I am not sure that appointing an animal welfare commissioner or reopening old pending texts is the best solution, if there is not behind a real political will to improve things and a real targeting of the wrongdoers. The reality is that the European Commission does not care about animal welfare and that this is something it does not understand. Moreover, when it comes to signing free trade agreements with countries with little regard for the treatment of animals, the question of well-being no longer arises. You even push cynicism to the point of explaining that we must continue to export live animals to the Middle East so that they can be ritually slaughtered there. Like what, your interest in animal welfare is very variable geometry! Contrary to what you seem to believe, breeders are not your enemies. Breeding is a difficult profession that pays little. We do not start breeding without a passion and love for animals. And I can assure you that no one, from the breeder to the consumer to the carrier, has an interest in the animal suffering. Stop wanting to oppose animal welfare and animal husbandry, as if the two are incompatible. Get out of your ivory tower and meet those who feed us. Whether it is the transport of animals, the end of cages, experimentation or fur, nothing will be done without involving all actors in the sector. Your punitive criteria are useless if you do not cooperate with all agricultural sectors. The ball is in your court!

Mr President, Commissioner, in France, a farmer commits suicide every two days or so. This statistic is a clear representation of their unhappiness. Contrary to what you imply, working conditions are not the main cause of this discomfort. You who have never seen a farm in your life, know that new tools and technologies help, but they have their limits. A new tractor won't guarantee you a decent income at the end of the month. Artificial intelligence will not remove tons of low-quality products you import from abroad. A wind turbine in the field will not reduce the administrative burden. Their demands have been clear for years; You simply refuse to hear them. All your so-called solutions will only make things worse. Ladies and gentlemen of the Commission, you have betrayed farmers enough. Leave them alone at last.

Mr President, the masks are falling. As the EU-Mercosur agreement continues to move forward, it is clear that some who claim to defend our farmers are actually acting against their interests. Here in the European Parliament, a crucial debate on Mercosur proposed by the National Rally has been blocked by a surprising alliance between macroists, socialists, and even the EPP of François-Xavier Bellamy, a group that claims to defend agriculture. What then is the value of the words of those who, in Paris, denounce Mercosur, but who, in Brussels, prevent this debate? They're hypocrites. This treaty, designed to satisfy German industrial interests, is an immense betrayal. And who supported the President of the European Commission? François-Xavier Bellamy and his allies, who voted for the von der Leyen Commission on November 27, gave him the mandate to advance Mercosur. In the face of this charade, there is only one voice standing up for our farmers: the National Gathering. We voted against von der Leyen, against his Commission, and we will vote against the adoption of Mercosur. Let us not be fooled by misleading speeches. The hour of truth has arrived. The National Rally will lead this fight to the end.