Negotiations on plastic pollution: France regrets "maneuvers" but is optimistic

A week of international negotiations ends in Paris this Friday, June 2 to develop a legally binding treaty by the end of 2024 to end plastic pollution that poisons the planet and our health. 175 States are meeting at UNESCO headquarters to make as much progress as possible before the next negotiations scheduled for Nairobi next November.

Annual plastic production has more than doubled in 20 years to 460 million tonnes. AP - Aurelien Morissard

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According to Christophe Béchu, French Minister of the Environment, the beginning of the week was rather "laborious": "A lot of nitpicking, a lot of delaying tactics to discuss procedural points have led to us entering late into serious things.

The strategy of the Gulf countries, led by oil producers, and Asian countries, the main plastics manufacturers, has been to buy time and undermine efforts for an ambitious treaty. In the end, the substantive issues were still addressed. "What I remember rather as good news is that even within the producing countries, no country has opposed that we say that there are plastics that were more dangerous for the environment than others, and that the principle of a ban on some of these plastics could be established," detailed the minister at the microphone of the journalist of RFI, Jeanne Richard.

However, producing countries remain clearly opposed to the idea of reducing the total amount of plastic produced. And with all these difficulties and delays, it is now certain that these negotiations will not lead to a first draft agreement as envisaged at the beginning of the week.

Christophe Béchu was optimistic about the possibility of having by Friday evening, June 2, a "clear mandate" for a first draft text to be developed and that discussions continue without waiting for the next official negotiations next autumn in Kenya. "Discussions and international negotiations must continue between now and the meeting in Kenya non-stop, so that we maintain this pressure in the negotiations that allows us to meet this 2024 objective," he said.

>> Read also: Plastic pollution: last straight line for a draft treaty, industrialists are resisting

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