On Wednesday, several hundred demonstrators gathered in Paris to denounce the Duplomb law and the attempt to reintroduce banned pesticides into French agriculture. A petition against the law, filed in the summer on the National Assembly website, broke an absolute record for signatures, forcing deputies to organize a debate on the subject.

Published on: 02/11/2026 - 7:35 p.m. Modified on: 02/12/2026 - 11:21 a.m.

On the Esplanade des Invalides, a dense crowd is gathered under a myriad of multicolored flags, fluttering in the wind. Under a yellow tent, two men in white protective suits and hygienic masks fill glasses with a fluorescent yellow liquid. “Here! Drink! Pesticide cocktails!”, says one of them. “No, no don’t drink!” he changes his mind when faced with a curious person who hasn't caught the joke.

On Wednesday February 11, a few hundred demonstrators responded to express their opposition to the controversial Duplomb law. An “ecological aberration”, “pro-pesticide”, “dangerous for health” criticize the speakers in turn at the microphone.

For several months, this text, carried by LR and UDI deputies Laurent Duplomb and Franck Menonville, has crystallized the anger of environmental organizations and well beyond. A citizen petition against this text, filed in the summer on the National Assembly website, broke a record number of signatures, forcing deputies to hold a public debate on it on Wednesday. A first in France for a petition.

A “false solution” for agriculture

The event was organized by a collective of more than 80 environmental, trade union, scientific and even agricultural associations. Because if the first two unions in this sector (FNSEA and Rural Coordination) have spoken out in favor of the law, not all share this point of view.

“Acetamiprid is not only a carcinogenic pesticide, dangerous for human health and the environment, but its return would in no way solve the problems of the vast majority of agriculture” asserts Matthieu Courgeau.

This dairy cow breeder traveled from Vendée to express his opposition to the text. With his “Nourrir” collective, bringing together 54 citizen and agricultural organizations, he has been mobilizing for months.

Protection or endangerment?

For its authors, the Duplomb law aims to "remove constraints on the exercise of the profession of farmer" threatened by unfair competition from countries with more permissive standards than France, including in Europe. To do this, the two deputies behind the text, themselves dairy farmers and farmers, wanted to introduce exemptions to allow the use of banned pesticides, notably acetamiprid, by certain sectors.

These exemptions, considered too broad, were censored by the Constitutional Council. But several other controversial measures, allowing the expansion of industrial livestock farming or facilitating the storage of water in megabasins, were maintained in the final version of the text, adopted on July 8, 2025 then promulgated on August 11.

And the two deputies do not intend to stop there. At the beginning of February, they tabled a new, more restrictive bill to reintroduce two pesticides (acetamiprid and flupyradifurone) in specific sectors including beets, hazelnuts, cherries and potatoes to avoid new constitutional censorship.

A feeling of abandonment from the government

For Mathieu Courgeau, the two deputies are on the wrong track: "The question to be addressed above all is the income of farmers: the margins with mass distribution and competition with foreign countries. But we have the feeling that these subjects are abandoned by the government", continues the co-president of the "Nourrir" collective.

The 40-year-old farmer, who chose organic, deplores the elimination of state aid supporting the sector, repealed in 2025: “We are being signed free trade agreements, while we are defending local agriculture, on a human scale which protects the environment” he explains.

A subject to which Annette says she is very sensitive. This mother came accompanied by her nine-year-old daughter Rose. "My daughter is very attached to animal life, she wants to be a veterinarian. I am also worried about her future, the risks of pesticides for her health... This kind of event allows us to reconnect with the farming world, to bring together the struggles," she rejoices.

Broad opposition

This convergence of struggles crystallized in the summer around the petition “No to the Duplomb law” launched by Éleonore Pattery, a young 23-year-old from Bordeaux. Posted on the National Assembly platform on July 10, 2025, two days after the adoption of the law, it quickly exceeded the threshold of 500,000 signatures required for a public parliamentary debate to be organized. A first since the creation of the platform in 2020, which nevertheless houses some 1,600 petitions.

A strictly symbolic debate, without voting, but which reflects the strong mobilization against the text. The petition has since exceeded 2 million signatures.

The demonstration at Les Invalides was organized on the day of this debate from which the demonstrators did not seem to expect anything. Some parliamentarians came to show their support before going to the Assembly. Among them Delphine Batho, former Minister of Ecology under François Hollande. “This debate unfortunately is without a vote. But it was civil society which imposed it and what happened around the Duplomb law is unprecedented in France” underlines the environmentalist MP for the 2nd constituency of Deux-Sèvres. It is the beginning, in my eyes, of an irreversible movement of awareness about the issues of environmental health and the refusal of food poisoning.”

Matthieu Courgeau hopes, for his part, that this “awakening” will be taken into account by the government. "The voice of the two million signatories must weigh and not just on a debate. It must be a start to change the agricultural policies of this country."

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