23-year-old student rallies half a million French against controversial farming law

PARIS — A petition launched by a 23-year-old student to repeal a new French law on farming has garnered more than 549,000 signatures, surpassing the threshold to be debated in the French parliament — a first in France’s recent history.

The French parliament earlier this month adopted a law, dubbed “Loi Duplomb” after the name of one of its proponents, which its supporters say would make life easier for farmers by cutting red tape, but also by temporarily allowing the use of acetamiprid, an insecticide that has been banned in France since 2018.

The text is backed by the government and also by major farmer lobbies FNSEA and Jeunes Agriculteurs, while one left-wing farmers union as well as green and left-wing parties oppose it.

The petition launched by Eleonore Pattery — an unknown university student from Bordeaux with a focus on environmental rules — calls for repealing the text, arguing that it is “a scientific, ethical, environmental and health aberration.”

On Saturday the number of signatures passed the threshold of 500,000. Beyond that threshold, the heads of parliamentary groups or parliamentary committees can propose to organize a parliamentary debate on it.

The president of the National Assembly economic affairs committee, Aurélie Trouvé, from the left-wing France Unbowed party, said she will make that proposal in the fall.

“It is the first time it happens in the history of the National Assembly,” a jubilant Trouvé told POLITICO over the phone on Saturday.

But, for the debate to happen, the proposal has to first get the nod of the National Assembly’s Conference of Presidents, an organ which gathers key lawmakers including the leaders of permanent parliamentary committees like Trouvé. The Conference of Presidents will meet again on Sept. 12.

“I hope that we will be able to have this debate,” Trouvé said, warning that ignoring the petition would be a “democratic denial.”

While the text can’t be repealed during the parliamentary debate, the success of the petition is a blow for the government and for farmers’ lobbies that have defended the measure on a symbolical level.

France’s Constitutional Council is also looking into the text and could censor part of it if the council considers them to be contrary to the constitution.