Agricultural recovery plan: Sébastien Lecornu announces an envelope “between 500 and 700 million euros”

Sébastien Lecornu announced Thursday that an envelope of “between 500 and 700 million euros” would be released for the agricultural recovery plan for 2027, in particular for “the adaptation to climate change of agricultural production”, which was brought to the ground this summer by drought and heatwaves. The final amount will depend on “consultations” undertaken with stakeholders but also on “parliamentary discussions”, while the 2027 state budget is currently being examined in the National Assembly.

The government has already released more than a billion euros in emergency measures in the 2026 budget, to help a sector affected by drought, repeated heatwaves, and the increase in the price of fuel and fertilizers due to the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz since the spring. The emergency plan was financed “mainly by redeployment of credits from 2026 credits,” declared the Prime Minister after an interministerial meeting in Matignon. The recovery plan is for 2027, “with credits which are already in the initial copy”, namely the 2027 draft budget, he added.

But this “recovery plan, for it to work, it really has to come from the ground”, and “this is why I said from the start” that “we will gradually incorporate, by amendment, the new features to adapt”, clarified Sébastien Lecornu. The 500 to 700 million euros mentioned to finance this recovery plan are “an indicative sum” and “we must end up with a 5% deficit in the end”. “If it were to be more, by definition, it would have to be secured by revenues or savings elsewhere,” he said again. The agricultural unions hoped for an envelope at least similar to that of the emergency plan for the recovery plan.

The government wants to bring together distributors and manufacturers ahead of price negotiations

The ministers did not detail the distribution of the 500 to 700 million between the measures already in the draft budget and those which will be subject to government amendments. The recovery plan must, for example, include, through an amendment, the payment by the State of interest on up to 2 billion euros of outstanding bank loans. The Minister of Agriculture Annie Genevard also spoke on Thursday of the adaptation of livestock buildings to rising temperatures, which requires investments from next year to avoid seeing millions of poultry suffocated by the heat in henhouses again this summer in the Great West.

Water storage was also mentioned. A hydraulic fund is already allocated 60 million euros in the draft budget, while the agricultural emergency law adopted this summer sets a target of doubling water storage for agriculture by 2030. The meeting, dedicated to the agricultural recovery plan, was held in Matignon, with the Prime Minister and the ministers of Agriculture, Ecological Transition Monique Barbut and SMEs and Commerce Serge Papin. The first part of the meeting was devoted to “very precise monitoring of the consumption of credits” of the emergency plan (more than a billion euros), presented at the beginning of September by Annie Genevard. “A certain number of help desks are working very well, others have fallen behind schedule,” noted Sébastien Lecornu. Farmers complain in particular about the delays in payment of aid for non-road diesel for tractors.

Sébastien Lecornu and Serge Papin also announced that they were going to bring together food distributors ahead of the opening, on December 1, of their price negotiations with their industrial suppliers, in the hope of reaching a “responsibility pact”. Asked about the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the renewal of which for the period 2028-34 is currently under discussion in Brussels, Sébastien Lecornu insisted that it was “absolutely essential” that the CAP “remains common, with common financing”, “because we are a great agricultural power and we have a vocation to export”. The States must agree on the Union budget for 2028-34, but are divided between the “frugals” who, like Germany, advocate cuts, and others like France who call for new revenue.