As France’s election season gathers steam, the fishermen from Saint-Brieuc on the north Brittany coast have had a stream of illustrious visitors, including the EU’s former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, reports the Financial Times.
But instead of discussing Brexit and fishing, Barnier and other conservative politicians have focused on a different bugbear: a €2.4bn offshore wind farm project that has sparked such ire among locals that a flotilla took to the sea to protest when underwater construction work started earlier this year.
Dubbing it a “failure” and a “disaster”, Barnier, who is also a former environment and agriculture minister, joined a chorus of demands for the project to be stopped.
Barnier is one of the five politicians campaigning in the primary this week to choose the centre-right candidate in the presidential election in April.
What would normally be a local dispute has spiralled into a polarising national election issue as France gears up for what could be a tumultuous campaign.
Grumblings over the Saint-Brieuc plans have been swept up in a broader backlash against wind farms that is hogging airtime in television debates and has become a rallying cry on the right.