French beekeepers and environmentalists are furious after parliament approved a bill to reauthorize two banned pesticides that scientists say can poison bees.
“There are no words to express the frustration,” said Carolyn Bouguet, a beekeeper from Essonne, in the Paris metropolitan area. “Honey bee populations are already suffering severely from climate change, new parasites and habitat loss, and now this is happening.”
Henri Clément, a beekeeper from the southern Lozère department and a spokesman for the French beekeeping association UNAF, said the move was “an absolute disaster for our beekeeping sector and for biodiversity as a whole.”
The risk to bees is “very high mortality and reduced yields,” Clément told local media. “It is completely incomprehensible that these pesticides have been reauthorized. We have been fighting against pesticides for 30 years. This is scandalous, unreasonable and irresponsible.”
The law, passed on Tuesday, grants France’s Food and Environmental Safety Agency an exemption to allow the use of the pesticides acetamiprid and flupyradifurone in distressed agricultural sectors and under exceptional circumstances.
Growers say they can no longer compete with European rivals because the pesticide, which is allowed in the EU but banned in France, will be authorized to fight aphid-borne diseases that ruin sugar beet, apple, hazelnut and cherry crops.
Scientific studies have proven that acetamiprid, a neonicotinoid with strong neurotoxic effects, can poison bees and affect their foraging ability and memory. A 2024 study suggested that flupyradifuron could be lethal to some honey bees.
Greenpeace France said the country’s centrist government and its right-wing allies in parliament were “trampling on science, health, the environment and the clear will of the people”, calling the bill “deeply worrying” and “shameful”.
French Environment Minister Monique Barbu said the bill was “too many setbacks for the environment” and tendered her resignation on Wednesday, but was later persuaded to stay on in a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron.
Monique Barbu, France’s Minister of the Environment, previously served as president of WWF France. Photo: Sarah Maysonier/Reuters
But FNSEA, France’s largest farmers’ union, hailed the bill’s approval as a “major milestone and victory for French farmers”, and Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard said the bill would bring “real, concrete solutions” to producers.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, honey production in France halved between the mid-1990s, when neonicotinoids were introduced, and the mid-2010s, with habitat loss and climate change also contributing factors.
Bouguet said France had set an “example” for other countries when it banned neonicotinoids. She pointed out that scientific studies have shown that pesticides have negative effects not only on insects but also on soil ecosystems, which can affect human health.
“Bees are the canaries in the environmental coal mine,” she said. “The health of bees is a big indicator of what’s going on in nature. Protecting bees means protecting lives. Protecting lives means protecting our future.”
UNAF president Christian Pons told reporters that the law “claims to protect France’s food sovereignty, but since when did it become acceptable to destroy the beekeeper sector in order to save another sector, for example the hazelnut tree sector?”
Yves Delaunay, a beekeeper in the western Vendée department, said that since the introduction of neonicotinoids in the 1990s, honey production had “reduced from 80 kg to 5 kg per hive” and colonies had “collapsed”.
“In just a few days, the number of bees increased from 70,000 to 20,000,” he told local media. “They were disoriented and couldn’t return to their nests. We found them dead everywhere. It was a big loss.”
The Senate supported the bill by a 214-111 vote on Tuesday after it was approved by the House. The proposal to authorize two pesticides was included in the bill late in the legislative process to ensure passage in the right-wing Senate.
Last year, the French parliament passed a bill to reauthorize acetamiprid, despite a petition to the contrary that garnered more than 2 million signatures. The bill was invalidated by the Constitutional Council for not complying with France’s Environmental Charter.
Mr Barbe, who previously headed the conservation charity WWF-France, said after the vote that he had sought to protect “the tranquility of our forests, the quality of our water, the purity of our air, the richness of our soils and the diversity of life”.
She said she was resigning because “the forces opposing these goals have become so strong that I can no longer follow through on these ambitions,” but reversed her decision after Macron gave “assurances” about his climate goals.
Geneva said health authorities would only allow the use of pesticides in certain areas for a limited time and only if “there is no impact on human health or the environment, there is an emergency, and there are no alternatives.”
Beekeeping associations, environmental groups and left-wing lawmakers announced they would refer the new law to the Constitutional Council on the grounds that it does not provide adequate protections for human health and the environment.
