The Ministry of Ecological Transition announced Thursday its desire to extend from July 2022 the bans on the use of pesticides in living areas, such as condominium gardens, private parks or campsites. The law has already prohibited since 2017 the use of chemical phytosanitary products by communities to maintain green spaces and roads. Same ban since January 2019 for individuals and amateur gardeners who can only use products of natural origin.
A draft decree released for consultation Thursday, until August 16, plans to extend these bans (excluding biocontrol products) from July 1, 2022 "to all places of life outside of high-level sports grounds " . This would concern co-ownership gardens, hotels, campsites, amusement parks, commercial areas, green spaces at workplaces, educational establishments, health establishments, certain sports facilities (tracks racetrack, lawn tennis court, golf courses ...), and cemeteries.
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Cemeteries have been officially excluded from the law until now, apart from those considered a place for walking because, for example, they house burials of famous people, according to the official Ecophyto-pro website. For sports equipment, a derogation is provided until January 1, 2025 for those "high level" for which "no alternative technical solution allows to obtain the quality required in the framework of official competitions" . The draft decree does not concern SNCF, a major user of plant protection products for weeding its tracks and their immediate surroundings.
Last January, the Minister of Ecological Transition Elisabeth Borne indicated that she wanted to ban "before this summer" all non-agricultural uses of pesticides. His ministry and that of Agriculture announced Tuesday a 44% decline in volume of pesticide sales in France in 2019, after the surge in 2018 (+ 18%). But the NGOs Génération Futures, France Nature Environnement and the Nicolas Hulot Foundation denounced Thursday the publication of these figures, surprised by the use of a "partial" and "unbound" indicator , in place of the "Nodu" , indicator for monitoring the Ecophyto plan based on the number of dose-units.
