France eases pesticide controls in sop to farmers

France will drop strict national controls on pesticide sales in favor of a more lax indicator used in the European Union, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced on Wednesday in unveiling further measures to appease restive farmers.

In a second move, France will bar imports of food products containing traces of thiacloprid, a pesticide that is banned in the EU, to ensure that French farmers aren't put at a disadvantage to foreign competitors, Attal said at a press conference.

The announcement comes after weeks of demonstrations in France and around Europe where angry farmers have protested against the EU's green bureaucracy and competition from imports that aren't subject to the same environmental standards.

Abandoning the so-called NODU indicator — which uses sales data to calculate average pesticide applications across the country — has been a long-standing demand of French farmers. But this faces opposition from green groups, which have called it outrageous.

France would instead follow the less rigorous HRI-1 indicator used around the EU to measure progress on its plan to halve pesticide use by 2030. That's despite the fact that EU lawmakers have criticized its methodology as inaccurate — and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has abandoned the 2030 target for the bloc as a whole.

That France not over-comply with the EU's pesticide guidelines "was the demand of farmers," Attal told reporters. The government's new plan on pesticides will be presented at the upcoming Salon International de l’Agriculture, an annual farm show in Paris.

As of Friday, France will also ban imports of food products found to contain traces of thiacloprid, a pesticide of the neonicotinoid class has been found to disrupt the nervous systems of insect pollinators. Paris had threatened to do so earlier this month if the European Commission failed to impose an EU-wide ban.

″What is banned for our farmers should not enter our country,″ Attal said.

The prime minister added that farm work would also go on a list of understaffed sectors of the economy, making it easier for employers to obtain temporary visas for migrant workers.