Paris (AFP)
Génération Écologie (GE) launched a campaign on Wednesday "against the bill calling into question the ban on neonicotinoids", whose "toxicity" has "monstrous consequences" on the environment, and accuses the government of "obscurantism ".
The exemption for this insecticide is "the most serious setback in the protection of living things in years," said Delphine Batho, president of the movement, during a press videoconference held on the eve of the presentation, Thursday, of the project of law on this file in the Council of Ministers.
The former Minister of Ecology maintains that "the rehabilitation of neonicotinoids by the government is based on a lie", while "1,221 scientific studies" demonstrate their dangerousness.
According to her, the government made its decision "under pressure from the sugar industry lobbies".
"The stake is absolutely vital," insists GE.
"The toxicity of neonicotinoids has monstrous consequences which lead to the accelerated collapse of pollinators, insects and birds, impacting all living things, including human health".
It "calls for an essential and urgent citizen mobilization" by the distribution of a brochure entitled "Neonicotinoids: when it's no, it's no!"
and "the creation of citizen collectives with public meetings in the territories".
GE also sent a "letter to democratic parties and unions", inviting them to a video conference meeting on September 9.
Beet growers have called for the ability to use neonicotinoids to tackle green aphids, vectors of the jaundice virus that is causing yields to plummet this year.
According to the government, there is an urgent need to act to save the sector which in France, the leading European sugar producer, concerns 46,000 jobs.
It provides for an authorization for use from 2021 and until 2023 maximum of this pesticide, under "strict conditions".
Neonicotinoids, which attack the nervous system of pollinators such as bees, essential to agriculture, were banned from all phytosanitary use in September 2018.
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