At the end of January two health and safety inspectors got back into their official car following an inspection of a tomato producer's business in Brittany, west France. A few minutes later they heard a suspicious noise and a passing motorist signalled them to stop. The two inspectors got out and found that three nuts were missing from a rear wheel while the fourth nut was half unscrewed.
As far as the health and safety officials were concerned the origin of this attempted sabotage was clear; it could only have been carried out during the visit to the tomato producer that had just ended. “We'd gone the 90 kilometres there with no problem, and colleagues who had used the car the day before didn't notice anything either,” says one of the inspectors, François Florenty, who is also a member of the Sud Travail trade union. “When we arrived there the producer left for about 20 minutes, leaving us alone with his wife. What followed took place in a very tense atmosphere, punctuated by mocking remarks.”
In the language of the officials' bosses at the regional business, employment and working conditions department the Direction Régionale des Entreprises, de la Concurrence, de la Consommation, du Travail et de l’Emploi (DIRECCTE) in Brittany, the producer under suspicion is “known to the services”. He faced action in 2005 for hiring workers on the black and for employing foreign workers with no work permits, was fined for insulting gendarmes in 2009, and sparked complaints from employees about working conditions in 2010 and for racist comments made about the health and safety inspectorate in 2015.
The two inspectors whose car was sabotaged in the Côtes-d’Armor département – similar to a county – immediately lodged a formal complaint. But the investigation itself seems to have been carried out with rather less urgency. The market gardening farm in question has CCTV cameras but gendarmes waited until March before asking for the relevant images. By then those images had gone, wiped automatically by the video system. The taking of fingerprints from the car's hubcap only took place in June, more than four months after the event, and then only after an approach by the health and safety department's management to the ministry of justice, and following a demonstration by around 100 health and safety officials outside the local court. In the meantime the car that was at the heart of the allegations had been parked for several months in a public parking lot.
In July 2015 prosecutors decided to take no further action in the affair. “The person who committed the offence of which you were a victim has not been identified,” the local prosecutors told the two inspectors in a letter. “It is possible that in your complaint you had your sights on someone who you suspected but in this case the investigation has not been able to find sufficient evidence against that person.”
A Sud Travail's spokesman for the Côtes-d’Armor noted with heavy irony: “If they had wanted not to find any evidence they couldn't have done a better job! What we criticise the prosecutor's office for is not that they didn't proceed with the case – that's their right – but really for not having sought to find the truth. The two agents could have been seriously injured.” The spokesman also contrasted their case with how the prosecution authorities dealt with a health and safety inspector in charge of inspections at cookware and small appliance maker Tefal in Haute-Savoie on the other side of France at the same period. This official was taken to court for receiving stolen documents which appeared to show how the company had deliberately been obstructing her work. Yet the company itself faced no action.
The suspicion that the judicial authorities are adopting an indulgent attitude towards farmers comes at a time when agriculture has become a hot political issue. The prices producers receive are low, farmers are protesting and the government has stepped up its efforts to stem or channel the discontent. After high-profile demonstrations by farmers over the summer, prime minister Manuel Valls promised up to three billion euros in extra aid for the industry, as well a slower pace in the introduction of new industry “standards” that producers have to meet.
In July Valls also wrote a circular to prefects – local state representatives – asking them, in essence, to ease up on farm inspections. “Whether it involves the common agricultural policy, environmental policies, health policies or regulations in respect of work and social protection, the agricultural sector is subject to many regulations. The diversity of these rules and the number of inspections that they cause sometimes leads to situations of incomprehension that are detrimental to the inspector as much as the person being inspected,” said the circular.
In order to “limit the pressure of inspections felt by a farmer” Manuel Valls asked in the circular for officials not to go on site systematically and to give preference to “document checks”, to warn farmers in advance about inspections as much as possible, and to try to limit the intervention of different state services on the same farm. Finally, Valls asked prefects to “coordinate” inspections, an approach at odds with the certain level of independence enjoyed by health and safety inspectors. But had the prime minister been informed of the incident in which the two officials had their car tampered with? For Valls concluded the circular by stating: “You will not ignore any inappropriate messages against inspectors and the principle of inspections. You will make sure that all incidents are identified and give particular attention to their handling.”
“We understand the farming world's economic difficulties,” says François Florenty, one of the two inspectors in the sabotaged car. “For all that, should they be entitled to escape from respecting the law?” There is certainly a real tension between state officials and farmers at the moment, especially in very rural areas such as the Côtes-d’Armor. In mid-September two inspectors from the Direction Départementale des Territoires et de la Mer (DDTM), whose job it is to promote sustainable development and enforce state policy on the development of land and maritime policies, went to inspect the fertiliser log book, the fertilising schedule and the condition of fertiliser stocks at a dairy farm in the Côtes-d'Armor. Around forty farmers blocked their way at Plouaret until the local sub-prefect intervened.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter