Agriculture Orientation Law Passed Ahead of Agriculture Show
The French government has fulfilled its commitment to address farmer concerns by passing an agricultural orientation law just before the opening of the Paris Agriculture Show. On Tuesday, February 18, a joint committee of seven deputies and seven senators reached a compromise on the bill that had been presented nearly a year earlier and repeatedly postponed.
Earlier that day, the Senate approved the text by a vote of 218 to 107, almost nine months after its adoption by the National Assembly. The joint text will now be submitted to a final vote by the Assembly on Wednesday evening and the Senate on Thursday afternoon, marking the definitive adoption of the law.
The landmark provision of the law elevates agriculture to the status of "major general interest." Its passage is virtually assured, as the joint committee approved it by a vote of 10 to 4, with members of the far-right National Rally joining forces with those of the governing coalition.
"I would not want to begin this Agriculture Show by telling farmers that parliamentarians have not heard them," Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard told the Senate that afternoon.
"The bill addresses a number of issues that farmers have been eagerly awaiting. It does not meet all of their needs, but it is a useful and necessary text that retains the essential contributions of the Senate," Dominique Estrosi-Sassone, the president of the Senate’s Economic Affairs Committee, told AFP.
"This is the Senate’s bill, Senator Duplomb’s bill," said Aurélie Trouvé, her counterpart in the Assembly from the far-left France Unbowed party, referring to the LR senator who played a key role in significantly toughening the text in the upper house. "In six months, there has been a very serious regression by Macron’s party," which has now voted for measures it had previously rejected.
The left as a whole and environmental protection associations are fiercely opposed to the text, expressing concern about "unprecedented environmental setbacks."
In contrast, Laurent Duplomb (LR) said in the afternoon that the orientation law would "open up a new perspective, a new direction for French agriculture," calling for an end to "this declining delirium, this normative madness, these sterile oppositions" that are leading farmers "down the path of decline."
The text covers a wide range of topics, including the transfer of farms to address the aging of the profession, the objectives of agricultural education, the status of hedges, and the prosecution of environmental offenses. Above all, it aims to elevate agriculture to the rank of "major general interest" and declares food sovereignty a "fundamental interest of the nation."
The senators added a controversial principle of "non-regression of food sovereignty," mirroring the "non-regression of the environment" already enshrined in the law. This principle was maintained in the final text.
According to several parliamentary sources, the parliamentary compromise reintroduces the notion of "climate and environmental transition" into the major challenges facing agricultural policies, a term that had been removed by the Senate. However, the term "agroecology" remains excluded from the law, as desired by the senators.
Parliament has also significantly reduced the constraints on farmers in terms of environmental offenses – which have been largely decriminalized -, agricultural installations, and the destruction of hedges, in particular by providing for a flat fine of €450 for "unintentional" damage to species or natural habitats.
Parliamentarians have approved the creation of a one-stop shop for agricultural farm transfers, called France Services Agriculture, as well as the launch of a "Bachelor Agro," a three-year degree.
The acceleration of the parliamentary agenda to finalize this text before the Agriculture Show angered the left: André Chassaigne, president of the Communist deputies, expressed his "black rage" on Tuesday morning at the "vote on a law at a forced march." Socialist MP Dominique Potier denounced a "caricatured" and "unreasonable" text.
In a videoconference on Tuesday morning, several environmental NGOs also expressed fear of "the worst regression of environmental law in at least a decade," according to Laure Piolle, coordinator of the Agriculture and Food Network within France Nature Environnement.
