PARIS — French Minister of Ecological Transition Monique Barbut plans to step down in protest after lawmakers approved controversial farming legislation that exposed major divisions among President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist supporters.
A member of the minister’s team, granted anonymity to discuss a decision that has not been shared publicly, said that Barbut told Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu and her own office she would resign after the bill’s expected passage by the French Senate later Tuesday.
The government’s original draft legislation was intended to address French farmers’ frequent complaints about tightening margins and increasingly difficult production conditions. Two of its provisions — one that temporarily authorizes the use of a currently banned pesticide for nut producers and another that doubles water storage allowances for farmers over the next decade — have turned the legislation into a political lightning rod.
Barbut was against the pesticide and water storage proposals, both of which were added late in the legislative process to ensure the bill’s passage in the conservative-majority Senate. She made her opposition clear over the weekend in an interview published by Sunday newspaper La Tribune Dimanche.
