Roughly one-third of lawmakers from the president’s own party on Monday either voted against or abstained from voting on the law, after amendments were added at the last minute allowing France’s food and drug safety watchdog to approve the use of a controversial pesticide, acetamiprid, for nut producers and doubling the amount of water farmers can store over the next decade despite the threat of more climate change-induced droughts.
“Politically, we’ve managed to turn a law with more than 70 articles into a fruitless, dogmatic debate,” said Jérémy Decerle, a member of the European Parliament representing Macron’s Renaissance party, and the former head of the Young Farmers union.
But the drama within parliament also showed just how nasty the infighting has gotten in the overcrowded field of presidential candidates. Two of Macron’s former prime ministers, Edouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, are running for the presidency and threaten to split the centrist vote, thereby costing their camp a place in the runoff of the two-round race.
During parliamentary debate on the bill, Attal, who fell out with Macron after the ill-fated decision to call a snap election in 2024, asked why it was used to hastily reopen the explosive debate over pesticides.
After Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard declined to answer publicly, Attal texted her to complain, according to someone who saw the message and was granted anonymity to share sensitive private correspondence without fear of reprisal. Genevard appeared to mistake Attal for current Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, a nominal political ally of the duo.
Genevard replied: “But Sébastien, you’re the one who told me not to answer him,” before quickly deleting the message and sending a corrected response, said the individual who saw the texts.