is France zealous about banning pesticides?

This is a great exercise in direct democracy: dhe trade unionists from Rural Coordination who pose their conditions to the Prime Minister, at the end of the line. “You must commit to removing all the overtranspositions that are killing the agricultural world.” said the trade unionist.

“We looked at the transpositions one by one, and we are in the process of acting one by one“, Michel Barnier replies.

Overtransposition: behind this jargon, a recurring criticism. France would impose stricter standards than those decided in Brussels, particularly for pesticides.
So are French farmers really at a disadvantage compared to their European competitors?

In the South-West, hazelnut crops are ravaged by a worm. To get rid of them, an insecticide exists but it is banned in France, while it remains authorized in our Italian neighbors… a glaring example of unfair competition according to the producers: “Our European colleagues have eight molecules, while we have nothing left, we are totally helpless in the face of our pests“, annoys Jérôme Bessieres, hazelnut producer in Labretonie (Lot-et-Garonne).

This situation, presented today as aberrant, is the result of a law passed in 2016: at the time, to protect bees from this insecticide which kills them, deputies banned neonicotinoids. This is a first in Europe.

“At that time, in fact, we could say that France was over-transposing, we were going further than what the EU prescribed, explains Benoît Grimonprez, professor of private law specializing in agricultural standards at the University of Poitiers. However, the EU has caught up with the French bans and today the distortions of competition no longer concern only a few products.

Hazelnuts or even beets are therefore exceptions. In reality, France does not impose more bans than its neighbors: of the 422 active substances authorized by the European Union, France accepts 295. Aith Italy and Spain, we are on the podium of countries which validate the most pesticides. Before Germany or Poland, other, more restrictive agricultural powers.

So why do agricultural unions point to excessive zeal on the part of France? Some see it as a political issue, an attempt to defend an agricultural model, called into question by scientific knowledge.

At the end of 2023, a parliamentary commission of inquiry interviewed dozens of researchers who confirmed the impact of pesticides on health: “It has been said that there are consequences for neurodegenerative diseases, pediatric cancers, recalls Dominique Potier, PS senator from Meurthe-et-Moselle and rapporteur of the commission. The ban or authorization of molecules does not depend on public opinion, it does not depend on market laws, it depends on the general interest and it is up to science to say where the general interest lies for human health and our ecosystems.

The Minister of Agriculture Annie Genevard affirmed that she wanted the substances authorized in Europe to also be authorized in France, without specifying which pesticides could be placed on the market.