Closures of educational establishments, nuisances reported in transport or cinemas: bedbugs, a not new scourge but which various political groups are seizing, are now putting the government under pressure.
Faced with the growing anxiety caused by these insects, Transport Minister Clément Beaune will bring together the main transport operators and user associations on Wednesday to discuss this sensitive subject. The presence of bedbugs has been reported in recent weeks in cinemas, TGV trains, the Paris metro and the waiting area at Roissy airport. But not all of these cases are proven.
“An interministerial meeting will take place on Friday to see all the relevant components” on the issue of bedbugs, said Tuesday evening on RTL government spokesperson Olivier Véran, promising to “quickly provide answers to the French”.
Great return
Having disappeared from daily life in the 1950s, bedbugs have made a comeback over the past thirty years in many developed countries thanks to increasingly nomadic lifestyles and consumption favoring the purchase of second hand and increasing resistance to insecticides. This problem affects all social circles.
Between 2017 and 2022, 11% of French households would have been infested, according to an Ipsos survey carried out in July for a working group set up by the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety ( Handles).