Jul 21, 8:02 PM
France’s farm fix: a Senate vote, and the familiar pesticide quarrel
The emergency law gives Anses a narrow power to authorise two banned substances, but the political bill is already arriving.
France has a gift for turning agricultural policy into a constitutional drama. On Tuesday evening, the Senate adopted an emergency farm law by 214 votes to 111, and with it a carefully limited route to the exceptional use of two pesticides that remain politically radioactive: acetamiprid and flupyradifurone.
The mechanism is not a blanket return to old habits, which will disappoint the more theatrical critics, nor is it a clean break with the past, which will frustrate the more practical farmers. If the Minister of Agriculture refers the matter, Anses may, on an exceptional basis and subject to conditions, authorise the use of the two substances. That is the sort of legislative architecture that suggests everyone has won, until someone asks who exactly is supposed to explain it to the public.
The vote has already widened the cracks inside the governing majority. Monique Barbut, the Minister for Ecological Transition, opposed the law and said she would submit her resignation to Emmanuel Macron once the Senate had approved it. The left is expected to refer the text to the Constitutional Council, while Green MP Daniel Salmon attacked what he described as a reckless and destructive headlong rush, with complacent measures that deny the scientific evidence.
The supporters of the law are telling a more agrarian, less hygienic story. Centrist senator Franck Ménonville argued that the text answers the hypocrisy of producing less in France in order to import ever more products that do not comply with French standards. That is not a trivial point, even if French politics often prefers moral posturing to arithmetic.
The two pesticides at the centre of the dispute have different histories, but both are familiar to anyone who follows this kind of file. Acetamiprid has been banned in France since 2018, though the EU still allows it until 2033, with ever lower doses. Flupyradifurone, banned in France since 31 December 2019, is considered a new-generation neonicotinoid and is authorised in the EU until 2029.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu had promised farmers that he would find solutions to their problems with their means of production. The Senate has now handed him a law that may offer some relief, but only by inviting a fresh fight with environmentalists, a legal challenge and, quite possibly, another round of institutional theatre. France remains determined to protect both its standards and its sensitivities; the difficulty is that it keeps discovering how expensive that combination can be.
The broader issue is not whether a country can live without pesticides, but whether it can keep pretending that bans, exemptions and political compromise can be stacked indefinitely without consequences. The Senate has chosen managed exception. The Constitutional Council may soon be asked whether that is governance or merely a more elegant form of confusion.
Written by Christiane Hofreiter christiane.hofreiter@alpineweekly.com
