Anger of farmers: Michel-Édouard Leclerc believes that his name has been “thrown out to pasture”

Michel-Édouard Leclerc cannot digest having been, during the agricultural crisis, one of the privileged targets. While its brand has crystallized criticism from farmers, even being singled out by the government, the president of the centers E.Leclerc did not hide his annoyance this Monday morning on BFMTV/RMC. “The name of the distribution brands, of Michel-Édouard Leclerc, has really been thrown out into the open. We found ourselves being the target of the FNSEA, the Young Farmers and the government,” lamented the famous boss. “We were thrown out to pasture, and it didn’t work. Farmers are not stupid. My name was mentioned every day,” he insisted afterwards, pretending to forget the protest actions that have targeted E.Leclerc centers since the start of the angry movement in the agricultural world.

To justify his media silence in recent weeks, Michel-Édouard Leclerc passed the buck on the agricultural crisis to the executive. “Dodging is a way of sending the two opponents back to back. It was the government that this agricultural anger was aimed at, which was also social anger. Overall, it was a political crisis, with political and union escalations. “It’s better not to be in the middle of the shooting range,” he said. And he deplores not having received “a single phone call from a union leader”, nor from the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau. He “allowed himself to hit me on the sets but had nothing to ask me,” denounced the president of the strategic committee of the centers E.Leclerc.

The boss of the number one retail brand also unleashed his blows against Emmanuel Macron himself, particularly after his remarks from Brussels at the beginning of February on European purchasing centers accused of “circumventing French law”. Among the best known is Eurelec, the E.Leclerc purchasing center based in Brussels. “When you are French president, you study your files. We are not going to Belgium to say that when a company is Belgian it circumvents French law. (...) It is not because Leclerc has a purchasing center in Belgium that it does not respect the competition code in France. We have to stop the bullshit,” said Michel-Édouard Leclerc. To defend himself, in particular on the fine of 117 million euros claimed against Eurelec by Bercy, the boss affirmed that his brand had “no disputes with French companies, for a very simple reason: we do not negotiate agricultural products at Eurelec.

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