Exceptions are no. The Council of State judges that the exemptions granted in 2021 and 2022 in France to neonicotinoid insecticides to protect sugar beet seeds “are illegal”, in a decision handed down on Wednesday. “No derogation is indeed possible if the European Commission has formally prohibited a pesticide”, underlines the highest French administrative court in a press release, referring to the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) from January 19th.
Since 2018, the EU has banned the use in open fields, for all crops, of three neonicotinoids (clothianidin, thiamethoxam and imidacloprid), accused of accelerating the massive decline of bee colonies. Seized by the Belgian courts after appeals against derogations taken in Belgium, the CJEU had considered that no derogation concerning seeds treated with neonicotinoids was justified, including in the exceptional circumstances invoked to protect sugar beets.
Derogations for beet growers
In France, Parliament authorized the temporary return of two neonicotinoids at the end of 2020 to come to the aid of the beet industry, whose yields had been drastically reduced by jaundice, a viral disease transmitted by the green aphid. Derogations had been granted by ministerial decree on February 5, 2021 then on January 31, 2022 and the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau had said he was in favor of a new derogation for 2023, before the decision of the CJEU signed the end of the use of neonicotinoids everywhere in Europe and therefore in France – where they were only used in seed coating for open-field crops.
Several agricultural unions, environmental associations and beekeepers had immediately attacked these decrees of 2021 and 2022. They had been dismissed by the Council of State which then judged in summary proceedings (in urgency) that the derogations, taken other solutions are found to protect crops”, were in line with European law.
Decisions to the contrary
In a decision rendered on the merits on the same decrees, the Council of State renders the contrary decision on Wednesday, based on the judgment of the CJEU. The high court recalls that according to two implementing regulations of 2018, the European Commission prohibited the use of seeds treated with neonicotinoids “except for the purposes of cultivation in permanent greenhouses”, but that European law allows a temporary derogation “s ‘there is a serious risk for agriculture and in the absence of any other solution’. This explained his decisions in summary proceedings.
However, on January 19, the CJEU “clarified, for the first time, that when the European Commission has expressly prohibited, by means of an implementing regulation, the use of seeds treated with a given phytosanitary product, a Member State cannot grant a temporary exemption ”: which explains the decision rendered on the merits on Wednesday. “Being right too late leaves a bitter taste for associations because the illegal reauthorization of neonicotinoids has allowed beet growers to sow nearly 40 billion seeds and thus illegally pollute nature,” reacted the applicant association Agir pour l’. environment, in a press release.