Barbut was against the pesticide and water storage proposals, both of which were added late in the legislative process to ensure the bill’s passage in the conservative-majority Senate. She made her opposition clear over the weekend in an interview published by Sunday newspaper La Tribune Dimanche.
“This government bill, which was intended to address an emergency situation facing our farmers, has — since the Senate’s amendments — significantly altered the policy governing the allocation of water resources in our country,” she said.
Annie Genevard, France’s conservative agriculture minister, directly opposed her colleague at the Ministry of Ecological Transition, warning that “allowing this bill to fail — whether out of ideology, self-interest or fear — would push farmers to the brink of despair,” in an interview with another Sunday publication, Le Journal du Dimanche.
Balancing farming and the environment
The debate over the legislation has highlighted the tensions between calls to protect the environment and efforts to keep French agriculture economically viable.
It has also exposed serious rifts among Macron’s centrists, most notably between Lecornu and Gabriel Attal, the head of Macron’s centrist Renaissance party and a candidate in next year’s presidential election in France.
Attal and Lecornu both supported reintroducing the pesticide in question, acetamiprid, under exceptional circumstances, but in a parliamentary debate Monday night the centrist lawmaker nonetheless expressed frustration that the government allowed the provision to be introduced at such a late stage.