Emmanuel Macron’s strategies to support industrial lobbies at any cost

09 June 2025

No new announcements have been made since the government’s official statement this weekend: the President of the Republic is turning the spotlight on Polynesia and the high seas treaty (BBNJ) to mask the environmental fraud of the announcements concerning mainland France.  

Now embarrassed by BLOOM’s fact-checking revealing the emptiness of the announcements made about so-called ‘strong protection’ in metropolitan waters, Emmanuel Macron, in his official speech opening the UNOC conference this morning, carefully avoided mentioning the figure of 4% of areas supposedly protected from bottom trawling by the end of 2026. After an analysis carried out overnight by our team of experts, we have indeed demonstrated, with maps to support our findings, that these marine areas are located almost exclusively in zones where bottom trawling was already prohibited. 

This is the biggest environmental scam of the presidential term.  

Cornered, Emmanuel Macron appropriates a Polynesian success

The President of the Republic has therefore fallen back on the only announcement that presented no risk: one that is the result of more than ten years of serious work by the Polynesian government, local stakeholders, the Pew Bertarelli initiative, the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB), etc.  

When Emmanuel Macron explains that France’s announcements will enable us to “more than double the level of our strong protection in our exclusive economic zone“, from 4.8% to 14.8%, as stated in the press kit from the Ministry of Ecological Transition, the President is in fact relying entirely on Polynesia and its 900,000 square kilometres of strict protection.  

High Seas Treaty: Emmanuel Macron’s sham heaven to shine on the international stage 

The only new development announced this morning was the forthcoming ratification of the Treaty on the High Seas (BBNJ). However, it should be noted that when Emmanuel Macron states that ‘half the planet, two-thirds of our oceans, lived without any real international rules’, he implies that the ratification of this UN treaty constitutes a complete revolution in global ocean governance. This is a complete falsehood that ignores dozens of international treaties and multilateral mechanisms. Furthermore, the President presents this treaty as ‘enabling the protection of 50% of the planet’s surface, particularly against illegal fishing.’ Unfortunately, this treaty will not be able, structurally, to address the destruction imposed on the environment by industrial fishing: as hard as it may be to believe, the treaty mentions fishing only once in its entirety! Industrial lobbies have been working for years with the UN to be exempted from the scope of this treaty. 

• On the one hand, the Treaty on the High Seas adds to a set of pre-existing international instruments, which it complements and with which it will have to coordinate. Thus, if a subject is already covered by another instrument, that subject is de facto excluded from the scope of the Treaty on the High Seas. Among the most notable examples of excluded subjects are : 
  • mineral resources on the seabed, the exploitation of which is regulated by the International Seabed Authority, 
  • the governance of high seas fisheries, which falls under the mandate of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and various regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs), such as the highly dysfunctional Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), 
  • the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), 
  • various international and regional conventions and organisations,  
  • and the international organisation regulating maritime transport. 

• Furthermore, international waters that are not already covered by one of the fisheries management bodies, the RFMOs (regional fisheries management organisations), represent only 1.35% of the ocean’s surface area. To top it all off, more than 90% of fish catches come from exclusive economic zones (EEZs), a figure that rises to 99% for bottom trawler catches. 

This is why, following the speeches by the Presidents of France and Costa Rica, the Secretary-General of the United Nations reiterated that the Kunming-Montreal biodiversity framework must enable us to preserve 30% of coastal areas by 2030 in order to prevent bad faith and inaction by States in their own waters. 

Concrete and ambitious measures to avoid a diplomatic disaster

In June 2022, by declaring his support for a moratorium on deep-sea mining and simultaneously bidding to host the next United Nations conference on the ocean, Emmanuel Macron signalled to the world that he would chair a major conference to take concrete and rapid action to stem the collapse of life on Earth. 

France had everything it needed to pull off a remarkable feat and literally save humanity from the predicted climate and civilisational disaster, as an overheated, acidified ocean stripped of its biological riches can only lead to our own demise. We have economic wealth, competent civil servants, a formidable diplomatic corps, researchers, thinkers, an organised and demanding civil society… We had everything, including the instructions: the example of Laurent Fabius and COP21 in 2015 had shown how to successfully conduct international negotiations. 

But no, faced with a historic challenge, Emmanuel Macron this morning repeated platitudes and stated the obvious, while clinging to the branches of UN processes already underway in an attempt to mask the French government’s negligence in failing to provide the resources or political will to achieve a significant diplomatic victory for the safety of humanity.  

Thus, while the expansion of the fossil fuel industry poses an existential threat to the ocean, the climate and humanity, and while 145 parliamentarians from 39 countries called on French President Emmanuel Macron and Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves Robles to declare their support for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty and to launch an international initiative to implement the COP28 climate commitment to phase out fossil fuels, Emmanuel Macron ignored the issue in his speech, suggesting that the question of fossil fuels would remain a prerogative to be addressed at the decisive COP30 climate conference in Brazil. 

The French government has not done its homework, and it shows. If he does not want to be crowned champion of environmental hypocrisy at the end of this week, President Emmanuel Macron would do well to raise his ambitions and make concrete announcements: ban destructive fishing techniques such as trawling in 30% of our waters, a third of which are under strict protection with no extractive activity, protect 

Swann Bommier, BLOOM’s advocacy director, concluded: “First of all, we would like to congratulate the Polynesian government for its serious and exemplary work to truly protect the biodiversity treasures of the Pacific Ocean. However, we would also like to extend our sincere congratulations to the French government. It is clear that, to date, the government has opted for media spin, effectively protecting only the destructive fishing lobby. BLOOM calls for a media wake-up call so that the government’s deception no longer has room to spread without journalistic scrutiny that is commensurate with the climate and environmental emergency.”