PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron avoided a messy divorce this week when he convinced Monique Barbut, his restive minister for ecological transition, not to follow through on her public declaration to resign over the passage of a controversial farming bill.
But the episode highlighted deepening fractures inside his already embattled centrist coalition — which, if divided, risks being wiped out in next year’s presidential election.
The crisis spans both policy and politics. Macron’s centrists, like many across Europe, are struggling to balance environmental protections and the fight against climate change on the one hand, and assisting a farming industry facing tightening margins as well as increasingly difficult production conditions on the other.
Roughly one-third of lawmakers from the president’s own party on Monday either voted against or abstained from voting on the law, after amendments were added at the last minute allowing France’s food and drug safety watchdog to approve the use of a controversial pesticide, acetamiprid, for nut producers and doubling the amount of water farmers can store over the next decade despite the threat of more climate change-induced droughts.
