Paris (AFP)

Emmanuel Macron admitted not having managed to keep his promise to get out of glyphosate in three years, pleading a "collective" failure, in an interview with Brut on Friday.

"I have not changed my mind" on this objective, but "I did not succeed" in accomplishing it, it is a "collective" failure, declared the Head of State who, in November 2017 , had engaged in a tweet for a ban "at the latest in three years".

In January 2019, Emmanuel Macron had already warned that France would not be able to do without glyphosate "100%" in three years.

"Not feasible and that would kill our agriculture", then estimated the president.

"Why have we not succeeded? (...) When the others do not keep pace with us, it creates a distortion of competition and we sacrifice our agriculture to solve the problem", he said be worth Friday.

"When we want to fight against pesticides, Europe is the right level," he continued.

"We cannot win the battle alone if we do not have other Europeans," he insisted.

The Elysée recently indicated that the president wants to bring the issue to the European level, where for the moment only Luxembourg has committed to do without glyphosate by the end of 2020.

The current authorization of glyphosate in the European Union runs until the end of 2022.

The NGOs, they were very critical at the end of November vis-a-vis this option.

"The government deceived the citizens by making a promise which it does not keep any more", reproaches Agir pour l'environnement, arguing that organic farming shows that it is possible to do without weedkiller.

At European level, "nothing guarantees (that a ban) will be enacted by the 27 in 2022", worried Greenpeace.

Glyphosate, a "broad spectrum" weedkiller, was classified as "probable carcinogen" in 2015 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization (WHO).

An opinion that does not share the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa), which considered "unlikely" that it presents a carcinogenic danger to humans, and the European Chemicals Agency (Echa).

But scientists and NGOs have denounced an assessment "biased" because it is based on reports provided by industry.

In France, ANSES restricted in October, within six months, the agricultural uses of glyphosate, which remains the second most widely used plant protection product (9,700 tonnes sold in 2018, against 8,800 in 2017).

According to an assessment by the health agency, glyphosate can most often be replaced, in particular by mechanical means (manual weeding, dedicated machines, etc.) even if this entails a need for additional labor.

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