The European Commission has given France the green light for a tax credit for farmers who decide to give up the use of glyphosate-based herbicides, the Ministry of Agriculture announced on Wednesday.
Read also: How France failed to get out of glyphosate
"
The European Commission has just accepted the government's proposal to set up a glyphosate exit tax credit from 2021 for French farmers,
" the Ministry of Agriculture announced in a press release.
Presented at the end of 2020 in the form of an amendment to the finance bill for 2021, this measure grants a tax credit of a lump sum of 2,500 euros for farms that do not use glyphosate in 2021. It applies not only to the field crops sector, but also to arboriculture and viticulture, as well as to livestock farms present in a significant way in at least one of these plant productions, specified the ministry.
"Supporting farms that renounce glyphosate"
This aid scheme "
is therefore already fully operational and will make it possible to provide long-term support to farms which voluntarily renounce glyphosate
", indicated the ministry. "
With this latest approval by the European Commission, the glyphosate exit tax credit is definitively enacted and operational,
" Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie said in this press release, who "
therefore invites all farmers who can to seize it
”.
President Emmanuel Macron had committed in November 2017 in a tweet for a ban on glyphosate "
at the latest in three years
".
He admitted in December 2020 not having succeeded in keeping his promise, pleading a "
collective
"
failure
.
To read also: Release of glyphosate: "We will not get there" 100% in three years
"
What is important, when we are fighting for the environment, for example, is to do it at European level so as not to penalize the farm France against the Spaniards, the Italians or others,
" said Mr. Macron on Tuesday, in a video of questions and answers to farmers, broadcast at the end of a conference on food sovereignty.