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Since 2018, France has benefited from a derogation to continue to use neonicotinoids, insecticides used for sugar beet seeds, but harmful to the environment and bees. But the Minister of Agriculture announced on Monday January 23 the cessation of its use.
The decision did not make much noise, it is however important. Monday, January 23, while the Court of Justice of the European Union had ruled, a few days earlier, that the Member States could not derogate from the ban on neonicotinoids, the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, therefore declared that he no longer wanted to request a derogatory measure. France should therefore no longer use it in its sugar beet seeds.
France had been circumventing the law since 2018
Qualified by its detractors as “bee killers”, neonicotinoids are insecticides used in particular in the cultivation of sugar beets in France, which they protect from aphids. Although they have been banned from marketing within the EU since 2018, around ten countries, including France, nevertheless benefited from circumvention of the law. As such, a draft decree had thus been submitted for consultation by the Ministry of Agriculture, at the beginning of January, in order to authorize the use of neonicotinoids for sugar beet crops for a third consecutive year. It is this new derogation which was aborted on Monday.
22 healthier alternatives are possible
Still, the players in the sugar beet sector are worried, because the aphid, which transmits jaundice to the product, still threatens the crops.
“I agreed with the representatives of the sector that we would put in place a system which would make it possible to cover the risk of losses which would be linked to jaundice while we find the alternatives we need”said Marc Fesneau.
A situation which should however find a solution, better for the earth as for the bees. Questioned on France Info on January 4, Jean-Marc Bonmatin, chemist and toxicologist, researcher at the CNRS, explained that these alternatives already existed:
“In 2021, the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES) released an extremely detailed report which gives us 22 alternatives to neonicotinoids for the cultivation of sugar beet, including four solutions are immediately applicable. On the principle itself, I do not understand why we continue to make derogations, when we have everything we need to do differently” he added.
Now is the right time to demonstrate it.
This announcement is a delight for environmental defense associations such as Future Generations, which declares through its spokesperson, François Veillerette: “We salute this decision and this victory that we are winning after tough battles. This makes for years we have been alerting the government to this impasse what are these derogations granted to products dangerous and what is more prohibited! We recall in this regard that the derogations granted in 2021 and 2022 were therefore probably illegal”.