Presidential: the candidates' proposals on agriculture and the environment

Europe 1 with AFP 3:39 p.m., March 01, 2022

Ban on pesticides, carbon tax at the borders or even a "European shield" to protect farmers in the face of the Ukrainian crisis: the candidates for the Élysée are not short of ideas to support agriculture and defend the environment.

Here are five of them:

Total output of pesticides (Jadot)

The environmental candidate Yannick Jadot, who wants to "reinstall farmers in the countryside, with decent incomes", proposes the total withdrawal of pesticides by 2030 and a 0% VAT on organic products.

For him, "organic farming must be at the heart of agricultural policy and the money from the CAP (common agricultural policy, editor's note) must be used for the transition of farms to organic".

He also wants to ban synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.

Socialist Anne Hidalgo wants to ban the use of glyphosate or neonicotinoids "in the first 100 days" of her five-year term.

A "European shield" (Pécresse)

LR candidate Valérie Pécresse, who promises to "target agribashing and restore agrifierty", is concerned about the repercussions of the invasion of Ukraine on French farmers.

She calls on the European Union to put in place "a shield to protect farmers against the consequences of this crisis which will make gas and a certain number of basic necessities for our farmers more expensive", which she promises to lower land taxation of unbuilt properties as well as pension contributions.

Carbon border tax (Zemmour)

Like many other candidates, left and right, the far-right polemicist Éric Zemmour wants "a carbon tax at European borders".

This measure would protect French agricultural production against competition from products that are not subject to the same production standards.

On this subject, his position is not very far from that of President Emmanuel Macron, who has not yet formalized his candidacy for the Élysée, but who wishes to speed up the establishment of a "carbon border adjustment mechanism " of the EU, of which he holds the presidency during this first semester.

Priority to young people (Hidalgo)

If she is elected president on April 24, the PS candidate Anne Hidalgo, whose objective is "to reach 30% of the useful agricultural area in organic farming by 2030", will give "absolute priority to a policy of setting up young people farmers, to fight against land grabbing and soil artificialisation".

She wants to have Parliament adopt "a law regulating, sharing and protecting agricultural land, and a ten-year plan for the renewal of generations".

An agricultural law (Roussel)

The communist Fabien Roussel wants "an agricultural orientation and programming law" to "guarantee remunerative basic prices for peasant labor" and contain "the prices of industrial products necessary for production".

He thus intends to "launch a medium-term program for the installation of young farmers".

- And also... debt relief and short circuits

On the left, Christiane Taubira proposes to set up a device to alleviate the debts of organic farmers.

As for the RN candidate Marine Le Pen, she advocates "localism" and "short circuits", as opposed to "globalism".