Biodiversity: the Assembly vote banning neonicotinoids – Le Parisien

After an intense debate over two hours forty amendments and sub-amendments, where the right and some socialists have sought to counter such an outcome, the MPs adopted by 30 votes against 28, an amendment to that effect of the President of the Commission for sustainable Development, Jean-Paul Chanteguet (PS).
the goal, said its author, is “to send a strong signal to groups chemical, farmers, and the executive “.
a decree will provide” concrete responses to the farmers, faced with the sudden appearance of? a pest that could jeopardize their crops. ” And the list of alternatives to neonicotinoids will be determined on the basis of a contract notice of? Anses (the French agency for food safety and hygiene).
“The legislator must take responsibility by banning? Using these molecules, while allowing the farming profession? s suit, “argues the author of the measure in its explanatory memorandum.
LR and UDI deputies, some criticized the supporters of a general ban “search for a symbolic victory, political, media,” hammered the measure was still “penalize” french farmers, already in crisis, or that it was not until a less harmful alternative.
the general ban neonicotinoids had been reintroduced in committee, from 1 January 2017.? s initiative of France? s European Union has restricted some of their uses in 2013, but they are still widely used.
Now hundreds of scientific studies have proven the toxicity of neonicotinoids on bees and wild pollinators but also on aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates, fish, birds and finally the? human being argued environmentalists and some Socialists. These molecules, much more powerful than DDT, “retired”, have a mechanism similar to nicotine, argued Gérard Bapt (PS), a doctor by profession, asking “who would advise a pregnant woman smoking.”
in addition to the “responsibility” vis-à-vis future generations, invoked by several elected officials, including the rapporteur, the defenders of the ban pointed out that the farmers themselves were “fees” of these products.
in an unusual step, Stéphane Le Foll had sent a letter Friday to MPs call for them not to do such “brutal prohibitions” to the only French level, in particular displayed avoidance of “distortions” in competition with other farmers European. A process that has “somewhat surprised” Ségolène Royal, she released Thursday on BFM TV, saying understand its “concern” defense of farmers but lambasting “fighting rearguard on maintaining including pesticides”.
of the products “extremely dangerous to bees, to our health, to our environment,” Secretary of? responsible State of Biodiversity, environmentalist Barbara Pompili, pleaded Thursday in the Chamber for “responsible solutions, that can be applied. ”
“2018 just under knife to her throat as 2017 moves forward,” she held, in particular, are also showing favorable exemptions in some cases. But an amendment
the rapporteur, Socialist Geneviève Gaillard, explicitly providing for specific derogations himself has been rejected.
a half satisfied, because she would have preferred a ban in 2017, before a majority of potential change, the former Minister Delphine Batho however tweeted that “the fight is not over” because the text will leave the Senate before returning to the Assembly.