They are calling for a change in the pesticide registration process. Five NGOs filed on Monday, January 10, before the administrative court of Paris, an appeal against the state, accused of not sufficiently protecting the environment with its regulations on pesticides. These are Pollinis, Our Common Affair, ASPAS, Anper-Tos and Biodiversity under our feet. Two of them, Pollinis and Notre Affaire à tous, had sent injunctions to the State in September, “first step in legal action”.
Two months later, having received no response from the government, the NGOs decided to turn to administrative justice, according to Julie Pecheur, director of advocacy for Pollinis. This procedure is identical to that of “The Case of the Century”, on the climate, launched at the end of 2018 by Notre Affaire à tous and three other NGOs (Greenpeace, Oxfam, Nicolas Hulot Foundation).
“We are waiting for the ecological damage caused by the deficiencies and inadequacies of the State in terms of risk assessment and marketing authorization for pesticides to be repaired”, explains Julie Pecheur. “We attack the problem of biodiversity through a specific point, which is the authorization to market pesticides.”
For NGOs, the current authorization procedure is “totally obsolete and a veritable colander allowing highly toxic products for the environment to be put on the market” because certain harmful effects for pollinators have not been tested, such as chronic toxicity or the cross effects of several substances.
Another problem, according to Pollinis, tests for pollinators are done on honey bees, but not on wild bees – that’s a thousand different species. “We demand that all substances known to destroy living things be withdrawn from the market”, continues Julie Pecheur.
NGOs also demand “a reform of the approval process [des pesticides], that the State make available to the public all the regulatory studies carried out by agrochemicals within the framework of these marketing authorizations “ and “that the government take measures to accelerate the agro-ecological transition”.