The French government will strengthen legislation on the ban on exporting pesticides banned in France outside the European Union, Ecological Transition Minister Christophe Béchu told the National Assembly on Tuesday.
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“
We are the first country to have banned the export of dangerous pesticides, but the legislation does not take active substances into account
,” explained the minister, referring to the Egalim law which came into force in January 2022 and supplemented by a decree d application dated March 2022.
"
This will be corrected
", he announced, adding that he was "
finalizing the implementing decree
" with the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau to "
fill these gaps
".
This announcement follows a report published in November by the Swiss NGO Public Eye and Unearthed, an entity of Greenpeace, which had pointed out numerous “
loopholes
” in the laws supposed to prohibit this practice.
"Significant flaws"
The report estimated that France had authorized between January and September 2022 the export of nearly 7,500 tonnes
of "prohibited substances and phytosanitary products
" on French territory, mainly to Brazil where picoxystrobin is used for soy crops.
The giant Corteva would have exported more than 2900 tons of this fungicidal substance, at the risk of high toxicity for aquatic organisms.
Read alsoPesticides: the rise of alternatives to chemical soil treatments
The law and the implementing decree "
contain major loopholes, which allow manufacturers to continue to export large quantities of banned pesticides from France, completely legally
", according to Public Eye and Unearthed.
Christophe Béchu recalled that these types of pesticides are still exported from Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, among others.
Like the herbicide atrazine, a powerful endocrine disruptor for amphibians but also potentially for humans, sold by Syngenta from Germany from 2021, when it was shipped from France before.
