PARIS — Even from his seaside holiday retreat at the Fort de Brégançon, President Emmanuel Macron will be closely watching a key court ruling on a controversial pesticide Thursday.
The question of whether French farmers will be allowed to protect their crops with a chemical called acetamiprid is far from being an obscure technical matter. In fact, it lays bare a major fault line in French politics between the powerful agricultural sector and more ecologically minded citizens worried about pesticides harming pollinators and human health.
Macron’s challenge is that he is being squeezed politically between green-minded voters — often concentrated in metropolitan areas — and influential farmers from rural heartlands, while his liberal centrists falter and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally eyes the presidency in 2027.
France’s top constitutional court is set to decide Thursday whether a bill that includes the reauthorization of acetamiprid — under scrutiny for its effects on the nervous systems of both bees and humans — is constitutionally sound.
