Paris (AFP)
Some 150 left-wing personalities and environmentalists alerted Wednesday to the "major democratic retreat" and the "historical misunderstanding" of the bill on neonicotinoids, conceived according to them "under pressure from agricultural lobbies".
Judging that "there is still time to prevent an ecocide", they call in a column published on the World website to "mobilize and challenge parliamentarians, so that they oppose this unworthy law" which would constitute "a major democratic decline, totally contrary to the Environmental Charter, which has constitutional value".
The platform was signed in particular by the First Secretary of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure, the national secretary of EELV Julien Bayou, the deputy LFI Alexis Corbière, the deputy PCF André Chassaigne or the deputy Generation Ecology Delphine Batho.
Some of them took part in a happening Wednesday morning organized by environmental NGOs which installed dozens of signs bearing the effigy of angry bees on the Esplanade des Invalides.
On LCI, Julien Bayou denounced "madness", and underlined the "responsibility" of the government which uses "the same arguments" heard during "two previous health scandals", "asbestos and chlordecone".
The signatories of the forum consider that the bill which will be considered on October 5 in the National Assembly "is based on obscurantist arguments, denying the conclusions of hundreds of scientific studies on the acute toxicity of neonicotinoids and their uncontrollable nature in space and time ".
According to them, it is also "a historical misunderstanding", "in the midst of a global pandemic whose origins are probably linked to the destruction of ecosystems" and while biodiversity "is collapsing".
They also denounce "an unprecedented about-face", recalling that France was "a pioneer" by being the first country to ban neonicotinoids.
The bill is therefore "much more than a denial. It creates a precedent: from now on, it will suffice for an economic difficulty in a sector to justify a cancellation of the measures taken previously", they warn, pleading for " alternative solutions, more respectful of farmers and their health, living organisms, terroirs and the environment ".
After banning them in 2018, the government agreed to grant temporary exemptions from 2021, as in a dozen other European countries, in order to curb the "beet yellows" which has affected yields this summer. .
© 2020 AFP