General Assembly of TotalEnergies blocked: activists "are in their role to alert", declares Élisabeth Borne

The tone is less hostile than usual. Friday morning, environmental activists tried to block the general meeting of shareholders of TotalEnergies organized in Paris, before being evacuated by the police. However, the government did not overwhelm the mobilized activists. On the contrary. Since her trip to the Côte d'Or on the occasion of Nature Day, Elisabeth Borne felt that "climate activists" were "in their role of alerting". And seized the event to also put pressure on the group accused of "grenwashing".

“This is also what the government is doing. We must all accelerate on the ecological transition”, thus affirmed the Prime Minister, while acknowledging all the same to the oil giant for having “committed its transition to renewable energies”.

A few hours earlier, the Minister of Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher had made a similar speech, calling on France Info to "distinguish between form and substance". On the form, of course, these initiatives “create disorder in public order”. But on the merits therefore, the important thing is "the question raised by these actions". And that is “a very good question”.

Companies currently positioned in the oil and gas sector must "reinvent themselves", continued the member of the government, and "draw these exit trajectories from fossil fuels". Otherwise “they will have no future”. It is regrettable, however, that the question arises under this "disorganized expression, even as activists have posed the debate within the GA". "I'm not sure that the debate in the street brings much," concluded the minister.

Sandrine Rousseau, for her part, had a hard time hiding her enthusiasm by watching live images on the BFMTV / RMC set. "Thank you, thank you for doing it!", Launched the ecofeminist, convinced that all this "alerts public opinion".

“Thank you to them for being there, she insisted again. Thank you to them for denouncing the hypocrisy around these companies which have beautiful speeches, which have glossy brochures which talk about sustainable development at every corner of the paragraph", but "gorging on the crisis energy”. The MP did not minimize her attacks on them, criticizing “these people” for having “no kind of morality, no kind of consideration for others and for the climate”.

While the first tensions erupted between activists and the police, Sandrine Rousseau also condemned the device of order and considered "that we could have let them occupy and move this AG". "In addition, there, the violence that is exercised (...) shows how much we want to protect economic interests rather than the climate, and that, frankly, is not images up to the situation" , she further formulated.