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French govt under fire for putting pesticide phase-out on hold

France's government was on the defensive on Friday after environmental campaigners and opposition politicians accused it of having scrapped a key green policy to appease protesting farmers.

Published: 3 February 2024 16:17 CET

French govt under fire for putting pesticide phase-out on hold

Women hold a sign reading "Pesticides, GMOs, no thanks" as they take part in a demonstration in 2020. Photo: ABDULMONAM EASSA/AFP.

Agricultural workers started to lift roadblocks after more than a week of demonstrations, following government promises of cash and eased regulation. Among the concessions announced by Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau on Thursday was that a 15-year-old government plan to stem dependence on insecticides and weedkillers would be put on hold.

The latest version of the Ecophyto plan had aimed to reduce the use of pesticides by 2030 to half of 2015-2017 levels. But growers see the plan as yet another hurdle to their earning a decent living, as they compete with cheaper imports from countries with less stringent environmental regulations.

They complain that no viable alternatives to the pesticides are available.

Greens and left-wing politicians, as well as NGOs, have condemned Thursday’s announcement. But government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot on Friday morning defended the move, saying measures to reduce pesticide use so far had not worked and needed rethinking.

It “made for great marketing slogans” but “without any solution to take care of farmers”, she said. The government “is working on the Ecophyto 2030 plan”, but will “spend an extra month on it to ensure it is perfectly understood as support, not punishment” for farmers.

“Farmers themselves want more than anyone to stop using these products, because they are the first victims,” Thevenot said. “We need to be able to help them, which is why we are massively investing in finding alternative solutions,” she added, without elaborating on what those might be.

‘A poisoned chalice’

President Emmanuel Macron made the environment a key pillar of his 2022 re-election campaign. But he alarmed activists when he urged the European Union last year to pause environmental regulations as he presented a plan to “reindustrialise” France.

Macron said at the time that Europe had already done far more than other industrial powers.

The head of France’s biggest rural union the FNSEA, Arnaud Rousseau, said on Friday the measure to halt pesticide reduction would help “recreate trust” between the agricultural sector and the state.

“I want to find solutions. We need to do that straight away,” he told broadcaster RMC. He acknowledged that it would “take time” to find a way to “motivate everybody” in the sector.

But environmentalists have criticised Thursday’s decision. “It’s a poisoned chalice for the farmers,” Marie Toussaint, a Greens member of the European Parliament said on Friday.

Pesticides have been linked to increased risk of illness as well as bird and insect mortality, she argued. Agriculture had to move on to a greener model, she told RMC radio.

“It’s lying to the farmers to tell them that everything can be put on pause,” she said.

Clementine Autain, a lawmaker from the left-wing France Unbowed (LFI) party, said the government’s decision was “total madness from an environment point of view”.

She said it may suit those represented by the FNSEA, but was “not in the interest of most farmers, and certainly not in the interest of French people’s health”.

Greenpeace France on Thursday on X, formerly Twitter, warned that it was a “major and dangerous setback”.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.