Profits of industrialists: the Minister of Agriculture considers Michel-Édouard Leclerc’s comments “indecent”

Once again, Michel-Édouard Leclerc attacked the profits of industrialists on Friday on BFMTV, the origin, according to him, of a large part of the inflation that we have experienced over the past two years. But this time, he went too far, according to Marc Fesneau. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty published a long post on social networks to condemn the comments of the head of the strategic committee of the E.Leclerc centers, deeming them “indecent”.

In question, a passage from the interview during which the man who is often presented as “the favorite boss of the French” affirms that the large industrialists “have paid themselves” over the last two years. “Ukraine, Covid, post-Covid, the unavailability of containers, it was all a joke,” he then says. Before that, Michel-Édouard Leclerc had estimated that there had “been two reports from the General Inspectorate of Finance, which established that inflation financed 25% of the margins of our large industrialists”. The first, published in November 2022, indicated on the contrary that “the agri-food industry has compressed its margins”. The second, on the other hand, highlighted that the gross operating surplus (EBE) of manufacturers had rebounded by 50% in the second half of 2022, “wiping out their losses compared to 2019”.

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“There were dividend distributions this year and last year in the energy and transport sectors, but also in the cleaning products sector and large multinational agri-food companies. There were 20% dividends,” continued Michel-Édouard Leclerc on the set of BFMTV.

“We should end up getting used to and being indifferent to the untimely comments of Mr. Leclerc who has only ever served one cause: the consolidation of his profits alone,” reacted Marc Fesneau on X (ex-Twitter) and LinkedIn . “And then there are times when they simply become indecent because behind all that there are human realities. This reality is tragedies, deaths, powerful disorders. Economic and social,” he added, referring to the war in Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic.

And the Minister of Agriculture accused the distributor of spreading “conspiracy theories”. He believes that they are not “the ones who will help during the period. Nor the search for scapegoats or the absence of the slightest feeling of agricultural and more generally economic patriotism of certain actors. To fight against inflation, Marc Fesneau calls for “the responsibility of all”. “And we can perhaps hope that during this period of Christmas “magic”, Mr. Leclerc finally feels concerned,” he concludes.