This page is a part of the corpus (Annexe 1) used to write Stéphane Foucart and neonicotinoids.
Here, I relate what the journalist said in his article “Les pesticides tueurs d’abeilles créent les premiers remous au gouvernement”. All quotes, originally in French, were translated by me.
RMC on June 26 revealed an interministerial working document examining the possibility of eliminating by ordinance certain restrictions on the use of phytosanitary products, in particular to reverse the ban on NNIs.
The then Minister of Agriculture, Stéphane Travert, had confirmed this intention, ruling that the ban on NNI was contrary to European law and that there was no existing alternative. The then Ecology Minister, Nicolat Hulot, dismissed the possibility on Twitter.
Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced that the government had decided not to reverse the ban on NNI, which entered into force in September 2018. At European level, a committee of the European Parliament validated, on June 22, the European Commission’s plan to ban the 3 NNIs.
On the other NNI molecules, the data are less important, but already old expertises, for example those of the CST in 2003 and 2005 have already pointed out that the risk assessment methods of these substances were inadequate.
On the unconventionality of the global ban on NNIs, Delphine Batho notes that the European regulation allows member states to take precautionary measures; that other countries have also extended the ban on NNIs beyond the ban imposed by the EU and that “scientific studies have “established the impact of neonicotinoids on human health with adverse neurological consequences on human beings”.