SALON DE L'AGRICULTURE
Yesterday, one hour before its official opening, President
François Hollande visited the
Salon de
l'Agriculture in Paris, where all farm-produced riches of France
−
live as well as transformed
− will be on display for nine days on the
vast grounds of this annual fair at the Porte de Versailles. Just returned from
a visit to South America and to French Polynesia, where he was wreathed in flower
garlands, he found quite a different reception at the Salon where his arrival
was booed amid cries for his resignation. The angry farmers, who have been
marching and disrupting traffic everywhere for over a month, claim that
Hollande has not kept his promises and that they are hanging on by their
fingernails, facing bankruptcy if immediate relief is not forthcoming. Worst
off are the dairy farmers and pork producers who cannot compete with
lower-priced products from Germany or Eastern Europe sold at French
supermarkets.
 |
| Hollande in difficulty at the Salon |
Last summer Minister of Agriculture Stéphane Le Foll
acknowledged that French farmers pay more social charges and face stiffer
environmental regulations than other European farmers who can offer their
products at lower prices (
see blog 8/23/15).
He promised to take up the issue with the
European Commission in Brussels and to request that supermarkets show
solidarity by reducing their profit margins on certain French farm products. In
January of this year the government granted the farmers a 10 percent reduction
of their charges but it was not enough and the demonstrations continued. At yesterday's
Salon opening a beleaguered President Hollande said that negotiations with the
supermarket chains are continuing and that he would discuss the problems caused
by the EU's sanctions on Russia (big export market for French farmers) with the
European Council at their meeting of March 7th. For the farmers it was a song
and dance they had heard before, and they responded by tearing down the Salon's
stand of the Ministry of Agriculture.
 |
| Stand of Ministry of Agriculture destroyed |
The small family farm, so beloved by the tradition-bound French,
is facing an uphill battle against mechanized, industrial-size farms elsewhere
and their ultimate failure looms large. Bankruptcies are likely to reduce their
numbers in the coming years, and perhaps some survivors may want to reinvent
themselves as exporters of a high-priced luxurious niche product targeted at
the deep pockets of the ultra-rich, a segment that seems to suffer no slowdown.
Like fine French wines, champagne and perfumes, high-end artisanal truffel-studded
French sausage?
CALAIS JUNGLE
After a court last Thursday gave the Calais prefecture the
go-ahead to dismantle the notorious Jungle camp outside Calais (
blog 2/5/16),
local officials have begun telling refugees that they will have to move out. No
deadline was set, but after transfering some 3000 migrants to other shelters in
Northwest France in recent months, authorities have already razed the crowded
southern section of the camp and brought in a large number of converted
shipping containers equipped with heating and plumbing to house some 1300
migrants while their asylum applications are being treated. They also tried to
convince the other refugees to give up their attempts to reach England and
apply for asylum in France.
 |
| Jungle before |
However, Clare Moseley of British volunteer aid organization
Care4Calais said that several aid groups have been opposing the dismantlement
in court and that a new legal appeal against Thursday's ruling has been filed. Volunteers,
aided by French students, toured the camp and explained to the migrants that
they were allowed to stay while the appeal is pending. It appears that most
have no intention to move anyway, like the Afghan man who said "It took me
two years to get here and I have been here for three months now. I have tried
lots of times to go to England. I have family there; it's the only place I want
to go." Similarly, a Pakistani man (no-one gives his name here) said:
"I'm staying here. It's either here or England."
 |
| Calais Jungle after |
Some of the camp's residents have moved into the heated
containers, others leave daily in small groups on official buses that take them
to other refugee centers. But most prefer to stay in the improved camp that
contains a refugee-built church, a mosque, a language school for French and
English classes, and several shops. Among them are more than three hundred
unaccompanied children who have family in the UK and who could have their
claims considered here, according to Rachel Robinson of the human rights group
Liberty. British actor Jude Law, who visited the camp last week, called on
David Cameron to allow unaccompanied children in the camp entry into the UK if
they have family there.
The clean-up and eventual destruction of The Jungle has
begun but is not likely to be finished anytime soon. Furthermore, the appalling lack of a coordinated European response to the migrant crisis and growing nationalism in eastern Europe bode ill for the refugees in the short term and for the very survival of the European Union in the long term.
THE BATTLE OF THE CIRCUMFLEX
In the shadow of furious farmers and suffering refugees,
another battle is quietly brewing in France: the recent circumflex-and-simplified-spelling
issue has turned into an open confrontation between the Académie Française and
the Minister of Education
(
blog 2/5/16).
In an interview published on February 13 in
the daily
Le Figaro Hélène Carrère
d'Encausse, Perpetual Secretary of the Académie Française, re-stated the
position of the Académie: "A total opposition to any spelling reform but a
conditional agreement on a limited number of simplifications that shall not be
imposed by any authority and shall have to withstand the test of time." She insisted that the "limited
simplifications" were proposed in 1990 by the
Conseil Supérieur de la Langue Française and not by the
Académie
Française, "as the Ministry of Education has us believe."
The fine distinction between the Council and
the Académie might have escaped mere mortals, but Najat Vallaud-Belkacem,
Minister of Education, was not taken in and called on Mrs. Carrère d'Encausse
to explain herself. The hair splitting that followed added little light to the situation but
gave Mme Carrère the opportunity to slip in the fact that international studies
have shown that the educational level in France has decreased over the years in
comparison with other countries and that in 2016 we have one out of every five
French students leaving school without proper reading skills. Ouch!
If the fine points appear rather immaterial and both the old
and new spelling rules are accepted (so where's the problem?), one thing is
clear: nothing unleashes French passions
like touching their language.
 |
| New spelling? Oh Nooooooooo! |
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