Pesticide cocktails, flags and slogans: in Paris, the battle continues towards the Duplomb legislation | EUROtoday

On the Esplanade des Invalides, a dense crowd is gathered beneath a myriad of multicolored flags, fluttering within the wind. Under a yellow tent, two males in white protecting fits and hygienic masks fill glasses with a fluorescent yellow liquid. “Here! Drink! Pesticide cocktails!”, says one in all them. “No, no don’t drink!” he alters his thoughts when confronted with a curious one who hasn’t caught the joke.

On Wednesday February 11, a couple of hundred demonstrators responded to specific their opposition to the controversial Duplomb legislation. An “ecological aberration”, “pro-pesticide”, “dangerous for health” criticize the audio system in flip on the microphone.

For a number of months, this textual content, carried by LR and UDI deputies Laurent Duplomb and Franck Menonville, has crystallized the anger of environmental organizations and effectively past. A residents’ petition towards this textual content, filed in the summertime on the National Assembly web site, broke a document variety of signatures, forcing deputies to carry a public debate on it on Wednesday. A primary in France for a petition.

A “false solution” for agriculture

The occasion was organized by a collective of greater than 80 environmental, commerce union, scientific and even agricultural associations. Because if the primary two unions on this sector (FNSEA and Rural Coordination) have spoken out in favor of the legislation, not all share this standpoint.

“Acetamiprid is not only a carcinogenic pesticide, dangerous for human health and the environment, but its return would in no way solve the problems of the vast majority of agriculture” asserts Matthieu Courgeau.

This dairy cow breeder traveled from Vendée to specific his opposition to the textual content. With his “Nourrir” collective, bringing collectively 54 citizen and agricultural organizations, he has been mobilizing for months.

Protection or endangerment?

For its authors, the Duplomb legislation goals to “remove constraints on the exercise of the profession of farmer” threatened by unfair competitors from international locations with extra permissive requirements than France, together with in Europe. To do that, the 2 deputies on the origin of the textual content, themselves dairy farmers and farmers, wished to introduce exemptions to permit the usage of banned pesticides, notably acetamiprid, by sure sectors.

These exemptions, thought-about too broad, have been censored by the Constitutional Council. But a number of different controversial measures, permitting the enlargement of business livestock farming or facilitating the storage of water in megabasins, have been maintained within the closing model of the textual content, adopted on July 8, 2025 then promulgated on August 11.

And the 2 deputies don’t intend to cease there. At the start of February, they tabled a brand new, extra restrictive invoice to reintroduce two pesticides (acetamiprid and flupyradifurone) in particular sectors together with beets, hazelnuts, cherries and potatoes to keep away from new constitutional censorship.

A sense of abandonment from the federal government

For Mathieu Courgeau, the 2 deputies are on the mistaken observe: “The question to be addressed above all is the income of farmers: the margins with mass distribution and competition with foreign countries. But we have the feeling that these subjects are abandoned by the government”, continues the co-president of the “Nourrir” collective.

The 40-year-old farmer, who selected natural, deplores the elimination of state help supporting the sector, repealed in 2025: “We are being signed free trade agreements, while we are defending local agriculture, on a human scale which protects the environment” he explains.

A topic to which Annette says she could be very delicate. This mom got here accompanied by her nine-year-old daughter Rose. “My daughter is very attached to animal life, she wants to be a veterinarian. I am also worried about her future, the risks of pesticides for her health… This kind of event allows us to reconnect with the farming world, to bring together the struggles,” she rejoices.

Broad opposition

This convergence of struggles crystallized in the summertime across the petition “No to the Duplomb law” launched by Éleonore Pattery, a younger 23-year-old from Bordeaux. Posted on the platform of the National Assembly on July 10, 2025, two days after the adoption of the legislation, it rapidly exceeded the brink of 500,000 signatures required for a public parliamentary debate to be organized. A primary because the creation of the platform in 2020, which nonetheless homes some 1,600 petitions.

A strictly symbolic debate, with out voting, however which displays the sturdy mobilization towards the textual content. The petition has since exceeded 2 million signatures.

The demonstration at Les Invalides was organized on the day of this debate from which the demonstrators didn’t appear to count on something. Some parliamentarians got here to indicate their assist earlier than going to the Assembly. Among them Delphine Batho, former Minister of Ecology beneath François Hollande. “This debate unfortunately is without a vote. But it was civil society which imposed it and what happened around the Duplomb law is unprecedented in France” underlines the environmentalist MP for the 2nd constituency of Deux-Sèvres. It is the start, in my eyes, of an irreversible motion of consciousness on the problems of environmental well being and the refusal of meals poisoning”.

Matthieu Courgeau hopes, for his half, that this “awakening” shall be taken under consideration by the federal government. “The voice of the two million signatories must weigh and not just on a debate. It must be a start to change the agricultural policies of this country.”