Emmanuel Macron, the powerless president

07 June 2025

‘UNOC3’, the acronym for the third United Nations Ocean Conference, will therefore be associated with a political shipwreck in France. In an interview with the local press ahead of World Ocean Day, designed to drown out any citizen mobilisation on 8 June, Emmanuel Macron demonstrated his powerlessness and uselessness: he confirmed to the industrial fishing lobbies that they were indeed the masters of the game and could continue to rule the oceans against the public interest and pursue, unhindered, the inexorable destruction of biodiversity and the climate. The President staged the announcement… of the status quo! He confirmed that France’s sham maritime protection policy would continue, meaning that there would never be a binding framework to truly protect so-called ‘protected’ marine areas. The false ‘à la française’ protection will continue on a case-by-case basis, confetti by confetti, if and only if it achieves a ‘consensus’ between scientists and fishermen. What the President announced is what France is already doing: nothing.  

We thought that Emmanuel Macron had fought hard at the UN to host UNOC3 in order to carry out a PR exercise. We were wrong. His main intention was to use it as a platform for international sabotage of the very concept of protection.   

The icing on the cake of this sham is that Emmanuel Macron is taking credit for Polynesia’s announcements to further his policy of chasing numbers and mask his inaction in mainland France. Emmanuel Macron is signing the destruction of marine ecosystems and the abandonment of small-scale fishers.  

The scientific recommendations and international objectives are unequivocal: we must establish 30% of marine protected areas, in which all destructive fishing techniques, including trawling, are prohibited. And one third of these areas must be under ‘strict protection’, with no extractive activity.  

But on the eve of World Ocean Day and the opening of the United Nations Ocean Conference, Emmanuel Macron announced in the regional press (here and here, among others) his full support for the destroyers of the world and their mafia-like practices.   

Bottom trawlers, responsible for the destruction of 670,000 km2 of seabed every year, can rest easy: all they have to do is raise their voices and any ‘restrictions’ on their activities will be lifted.

Where has the state’s regulatory power gone? 

Tomorrow, the whole world will be able to see with its own eyes the devastation caused by bottom trawling, thanks to a magnificent, frightening and revolting film by David Attenborough. A hard-hitting film, a true plea for the ban on all destructive fishing techniques in all marine protected areas. 

The only response from the President of the Republic to the facts presented in this documentary? Handing over the keys to power to the trawlers which, according to the President of the Republic, have the right to veto over any ban on trawling in so-called “protected” marine areas. 

Currently, less than 0.1% of France’s metropolitan waters are protected according to international scientific recommendations. We are the laughing stock of the world, with the scientific journal Nature publishing a scathing editorial nearly two years ago denouncing ‘the hypocrisy that threatens the world’s oceans’ and specifically mentioning the case of France: ‘France, also the host nation for an upcoming UN Ocean Conference in 2025, is opposing a measure to exclude a destructive fishing practice called bottom trawling from marine protected areas in the European Union.’   

Two years later, despite grand announcements on deep-sea mining and the high seas treaty, we are still exactly where we were. 

Our public policy is decided under the influence of a tiny industrial lobby and only serves to protect its financial interests at the expense of the general interest, while the climate emergency becomes more pressing every day and scientists hammer home the urgent need for courage and imagination to embark on an ambitious social and ecological transition.  

 “ ‘Welcome to hell’ is the message that Emmanuel Macron sent to young people on the eve of World Ocean Day when he announced his refusal to take action to protect wildlife, the climate and natural ecosystems,” reacted Claire Nouvian, Executive Director of BLOOM. “It doesn’t matter that protecting them has been identified as the second most effective lever in the fight against climate change. The fact that they are waging a campaign of harassment, terror, threats and aggression against BLOOM and myself does not change the President’s allegiances: the lobbies that are destroying the world and democracy. In front of the whole world, Emmanuel Macron is showing that he has been reduced to a puppet serving industrial interests, providing a little ceremonial decorum. Who would have predicted that the President would fall so low? At a time when the world needs politicians who are more courageous and honest than ever to maintain the integrity of the climate, ecosystems and therefore civilisation, we are witnessing the collapse of politics. It is a curse.” 

Emmanuel Macron offers us a window into the void

We will have the confetti of Port-Cros. The confetti in the Calanques. The confetti in Corsica. According to the European fleet register, France has fewer than 30 bottom trawlers in the Mediterranean. Yet, even when confronted with 30 trawlers, Emmanuel Macron capitulates and refuses to announce a ban on bottom trawling in all marine protected areas in the Mediterranean. 

No mapping. Nothing specific. At this stage, trawling will be ‘limited’ ‘in certain areas’. Adding insult to injury, Emmanuel Macron is masking his inaction in metropolitan waters, which reel under the daily assaults of trawlers, by taking credit for the achievements of Polynesia, which has already banned destructive fishing techniques in its waters and will announce in a few days’ time in Nice the creation of a vast marine protected area of 5.5 million square kilometres, including 1.1 million square kilometres under strict protection, the result of serious work by the government and local actors over a decade, to explain that ‘by 1 January 2026’ we will have reached the European target of 10% strict protection.

‘French-style protection’, a shameful combination of political window-dressing in overseas territories and fake marine protected areas in mainland France, is being blindly pursued to the detriment of small-scale coastal fishing, the first victim of the trawling industry’s unchallenged reign. And this United Nations Ocean Conference, a lavish use of public money has just crossed a threshold by becoming the most expensive greenwashing operation in French diplomacy, with nearly €50 million spent so that the President of the Republic can proclaim himself champion of the ocean.  

The failure of political power is total.