In a move that has split French politics and sparked outrage among environmental groups, France’s upper legislative chamber, the Senate, has approved a divisive bill to bring back two insecticides widely documented to harm bee populations, prompting the nation’s environment minister to announce her imminent resignation.
Monique Barbut, France’s current environment minister, confirmed to close aides Tuesday that she sees no path forward but to step down, with plans to formally submit her resignation to President Emmanuel Macron by the start of Wednesday.
The two pesticides at the center of the debate — acetamiprid and flupyradifurone — have been banned from domestic use in France since 2018 and 2019 respectively. Backers of the legislation, led by conservative senator Laurent Duplomb, argue that domestic producers of sugar beets, apples and hazelnuts need access to the chemicals to remain competitive against farmers in other EU member states, where the two substances remain legal for use. Following the vote Tuesday evening, Duplomb told fellow senators he was proud of the legislative work that secured the bill’s passage, which passed the lower house National Assembly earlier the same day. The final Senate vote count stood at 214 in favor and 111 opposed.
Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard has also defended the policy, framing it as a necessary response to widespread farmer discontent that erupted into large-scale protests across France this past winter. She emphasized that the bill restricts use of the pesticides to narrow emergency circumstances: it will only be approved for specific regions and limited time frames, she said, on the condition that no harm to human health or the environment is proven and no viable alternative pest control option exists.
Critics, however, reject these assurances, pointing to robust scientific research that confirms the substances’ toxicity to pollinators and potential risks to people. Multiple studies have documented that acetamiprid poisons honeybees, damaging their ability to forage for food and impairing their memory. A 2024 academic study further found that flupyradifurone can be lethal to certain bee species.
This is not the first attempt to reintroduce acetamiprid: last year, France’s Constitutional Council, the nation’s highest constitutional court, struck down a similar provision in an earlier agriculture bill backed by Duplomb, ruling that the chemical posed unacceptable risks to human health. That ruling came after more than two million French citizens signed a public petition opposing the reintroduction. Following the National Assembly’s approval of the new bill this week, left-wing parties have already announced plans to challenge the new legislation before the Constitutional Council if it secured Senate approval.
The bill passed despite unified opposition from most left-wing lawmakers in the lower house, after securing backing from far-right parties and a majority of centrist legislators. Environmental and beekeeping advocacy groups have decried the move as a rejection of scientific consensus and popular will.
“The government and its allies are trampling on science, health, the environment, and the will of the people,” environmental NGO Greenpeace said in a statement after the lower house vote. Henri Clement, a representative of the French Beekeeping Union, told regional outlet Ici Gard Lozere that the approval of the bill is “absolutely catastrophic” for France’s bee populations and beekeeping industry.