• On Friday, Yannick Jadot announced that he wanted to ban hunting on weekends and school holidays if he is elected president in 2022.

  • One more piece in one of the obsessions of this presidential election: hunting. 

  • Why so much attention and debate around this practice?

Yannick Jadot, Europe Ecology-Les Verts (EELV) presidential candidate, announced on Friday his desire to ban hunting during weekends and school holidays. "When I hear that three quarters of people who live in rural areas do not dare to go for a walk on Sundays when there is gunfire, it is not normal", he explained on BFMTV , adding that he wanted to ban hunting with hounds altogether.

A statement on which the camp of Anne Hidalgo (Socialist Party), through the voice of the president of the Occitanie region Carole Delga, hastened to contest in order to better distinguish the two candidacies: "When I hear that he wishes to ban hunting during weekends and holidays, we do not agree ", declared the elected representative, defending" the ecology of doing, that which knows how to reconcile economy and ecology, that which is in the accompaniment, and not in diktat or prohibition ”.

A political marker

Hunting has become one of the political markers for the 2022 presidential election, along with immigration or public spending, informs Alexandre Eyries, teacher-researcher in Information and Communication Sciences, “because hunting has a whole imagination and history in France behind it.

It's divisive, passionate, it gives the candidate personality ”.

During the 2021 Regionals, the outgoing president of Hauts-de-France Xavier Bertrand, reelected and now a candidate for the Elysée, had notably announced that he would seize the Ministry of Culture to register waterfowl hunting and hunts traditional heritage of Unesco.

A lobby not to be missed

A pro-hunting attitude on the part of most of the candidates which is not surprising for the political scientist Olivier Rouquan: “In general, politicians seek to curry favor with hunters. It must be said that more than a million French people hold a hunting license, which makes it a camp that counts for the presidential election. The hunters do not hide it and display their ambitions to influence the electoral campaign. Three weeks before the presidential election, on March 21, 2022, the National Federation of Hunters (FNC) has planned to give a grand oral to all the candidates, an operation already carried out in 2017.

"Hunters are a very well organized network, with a lot of media and political contacts and present throughout the territory", confirms political scientist Stéphane Rozes.

Beyond the number, the hunter is a perfect prey for the politician because his vote is undecided, even in the second round, specifies Olivier Rouquan.

Enough to make him want to roll out the red carpet all the more.

The specter of "yellow vests" and biodiversity

Hunting weighs all the more in the elections since the trauma of the "yellow vests", and the brutal awakening of the rural world in the political game. The recent fear of a social crisis around record fuel prices clearly shows the political's new obsession with rurality. "However, hunting is associated with this way of life, and to speak favorably about hunting is to show that we care about rural people, in a policy considered increasingly urban," notes Stéphane Rozes.

Still, the obsession with hunting for 2022 could face another huge presidential issue, ecology. “All the difficulty for politicians will be to link the fight for biodiversity and the hand extended to hunters. It is not necessarily a cognitive dissonance - it is even one of the arguments of the hunters -, but it requires subtlety ”, supports Alexandre Eyries.

Macronie, for example, continues its strategy of “at the same time”, trying to flatter both animal rights activists and hunters, sometimes giving rise to funny contortions.

On October 4, then in full SPA refuge, Emmanuel Macron defended the hunters as “actors of rurality”.

One of the first measures of his five-year term was to halve the price of the hunting license, while at the end of his mandate, the president doubled the envelope of the stimulus plan devoted to the renovation of animal shelters - from 15 to 30 million euros.

Is anti-hunting a profitable attitude?

If we understand better why Yannick Jadot in turn brought hunting to the table, isn't his openly hostile attitude against this lobby likely to harm him?

"There is no anti-hunting vote, but by openly taking sides against, Yannick Jadot flatters the urban ecologists, who are the base of his electorate", analyzes Stéphane Rozes.

And in a pro-hunting political world for the reasons mentioned above, less reaching out can make it possible to stand out and assert yourself.

“Too many contortions between ecology and hunting can confuse the voter.

There, Yannick Jadot takes a different path from most candidates, it emerges from the debates and prevails in the media, ”confirms Olivier Rouquan.

Hunt alone rather than merge into the pack.

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Presidential 2022: Yannick Jadot wants to ban hunting on weekends and during holidays

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  • Hunt

  • Yannick Jadot

  • Hunters

  • Presidential election 2022

  • Emmanuel Macron

  • ecology