Petition against Duplomb law reaches 500,000 signatures, opening possibility of debate in National Assembly
Will the debate on the Duplomb law be relaunched thanks to a petition? A text calling for the repeal of the law, submitted on the National Assembly website , reached 500,000 signatures on Saturday, July 19, around 4 p.m., a threshold that allows the Conference of Presidents of the National Assembly to use it to organize a debate in public session, if the signatures come from at least 30 overseas departments or communities. By Sunday morning, the number of signatures had exceeded 821,000.
The conference can also, however, decide to dismiss it. Otherwise, only the petition would be debated: the law would not be reexamined in substance, much less possibly repealed. No petition has ever been debated in the Chamber in the history of the Fifth Republic. Contacted by Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Ministry of Agriculture declined to comment.
"Thanks to your mobilization, the National Assembly will once again have to debate this text which endangers our planet and our health!" assured La France insoumise, in a message on X relayed by its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The leader of the socialist deputies, Boris Vallaud, called for the petition to be included on the Assembly's agenda "as soon as the school year begins" to allow for a debate. "In the face of lobbies, there are millions of us: ecology is fighting back," welcomed the national secretary of the Ecologists, Marine Tondelier, on X, while the former minister and Génération Ecologie deputy Delphine Batho asked Emmanuel Macron "not to promulgate" the law.
Conversely, Arnaud Rousseau, the head of the FNSEA, the leading agricultural union, which strongly supports the Duplomb law, considered that French agriculture "will disappear" if it is imposed "higher standards" than those of its European neighbors. "Starting all over again would be a huge waste of time and a losing end for the agricultural world," judged Quentin Le Guillous, general secretary of the Young Farmers. "We are going from problem to problem. When we no longer have farmers, there will be no need to petition," also commented Christian Convers, general secretary of the Rural Coordination, the second largest agricultural union.
The law had been fervently defended by the FNSEA and its ally, the Young Farmers, who had come to demonstrate in front of the Palais-Bourbon with their tractors.
A law “not at all supported by society”The Confédération paysanne, on the other hand, had opposed the text. For this union, the petition shows that the Duplomb law "is not at all supported by society." It "speaks a lot about the silent discontent of a majority of French people with a Trump-like political class, which constantly sacrifices ecology on the altar of agro-industry," added the association Agir pour l'environnement.
For its part, the Cancer Colère collective considered that the success of the petition constituted "a first step" . "Everything was done to ensure that the Duplomb law was passed on the sly, it failed" , reacted to the AFP the spokesperson of this collective, Fleur Breteau, who sees in the enthusiasm generated by the petition the sign of "an awareness that the time is serious and that it is up to us, civil society, to take over" . "It is the beginning of a new political sequence that I think neither the government nor the 316 deputies who voted for the law expected" , she added.
The petition was launched on July 10, two days after the final adoption of the law and its highly contested measure of reintroducing acetamiprid , by Eléonore Pattery, a 23-year-old master's student. In the text, the student, who presents herself as a "future environmental health professional" , writes that the Duplomb law "is a scientific, ethical, environmental and health aberration" , before calling for "its immediate repeal" .
The petition was widely shared on social media by left-wing elected officials, as well as by personalities such as actor Pierre Niney.
Expeditious course of the lawThe Duplomb law once again authorizes, by way of derogation, the use of acetamiprid, a pesticide banned in France but authorized elsewhere in Europe until 2033. The product is particularly in demand by beet and hazelnut producers, who believe they have no other option against pests and are subject to unfair competition.
On the other hand, beekeepers warn of "a bee killer." Its effects on humans are also a source of concern, even if the risks remain uncertain due to a lack of large-scale studies.
The petition also calls for "a democratic review of the conditions under which it was adopted." In Parliament, the law had a quick passage: after being the subject of a preliminary motion of rejection in the Assembly, a compromise was reached in the joint committee , then voted on successively in the Senate and the Palais-Bourbon.
The lack of real debate in the Chamber is one of the arguments put forward by left-wing MPs who filed an appeal on 11 July before the Constitutional Council , hoping for its censure on procedural grounds. At this stage, this is the most realistic option to prevent its promulgation.
The World with AFP
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