France's lower house adopts emergency farm bill 296-224, clearing path for restricted pesticide use despite coalition revolt

A fractious late-night vote

After hours of heated debate stretching past midnight on Monday 20 July, the Assemblée Nationale adopted the government's emergency agricultural bill by 296 votes to 224. The text now moves to the Sénat for a final conformity vote expected later on Tuesday, where passage is seen as a formality because the joint committee version preserved the upper house's key demand.

The pesticide clause that split the majority

The most explosive provision allows the Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire (Anses) to grant temporary, conditional derogations for two neonicotinoid insecticides banned in France but still permitted elsewhere in the European Union: acetamiprid and flupyradifurone. The substances would be available to a handful of sectors facing acute pest pressure. The clause echoes the earlier, more sweeping Duplomb law that triggered mass citizen protests a year ago and was partially struck down by the Conseil constitutionnel.

Rebellion inside the governing camp

Deputies from Renaissance, MoDem, and the Horizons group demanded the government withdraw the pesticide article before a meeting at Matignon. They cited Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu's own earlier stance against inserting an acetamiprid measure into the farm bill he had originally steered. When MPs including former prime minister Élisabeth Borne and Richard Ramos (MoDem) tabled a suppression amendment, the government used its procedural veto at this late stage to block its examination.

This filtering is arbitrary and contrary to the democratic spirit.

Renaissance group leader Gabriel Attal also criticised the move, while Horizons president Laurent Marcangeli struck his desk in fury after an intervention by LFI deputy Manuel Bompard. Lecornu's entourage maintained that the ban remains the principle and that Parliament had been left to decide.

What else the bill contains

Beyond the pesticide derogation, the law removes an article that had made reductions in water abstraction volumes conditional on the prior construction of water-storage infrastructure. The joint committee text preserved this change, which senators had championed.

Next steps and political fallout

The Sénat is expected to approve the bill without amendment on Tuesday, sending it for promulgation. The overnight rebellion, however, exposed deep fractures between the executive and its own parliamentary majority on environmental and public-health red lines, less than a year after the Duplomb law mobilisation.

These substances, already banned, threaten our ecosystems. We cannot go backwards.

Deputy Jean-Michel Brard (Horizons) announced before the vote that he would oppose the bill unless the pesticide article was removed, citing risks to health, soil, and water.