Petition: Two Million People Signed. The Court Agreed. France Is Bringing Back the Bee-Killer Anyway.

In July 2025, a 23-year-old master’s student in France started a petition. Within a fortnight it had passed two million signatures, the largest in the country’s history, and it was asking for one thing: do not bring back acetamiprid, a neonicotinoid banned in France since 2018 because of what it does to bees. In August 2025 the Constitutional Council agreed, striking the provision out of the Duplomb law on the grounds that it deprived citizens of the right to live in a balanced and healthy environment, a right written into France’s Environmental Charter. The judges pointed specifically to the risk to pollinators, and to the absence of any independent evaluation or limit on how the chemical could be used. That should have been the end of it. On 21 July 2026, the French parliament voted to reintroduce acetamiprid anyway, along with a second insecticide, flupyradifurone. The environment minister announced their resignation. Henri Clement of the French Beekeeping Union called the measure absolutely catastrophic. Please sign the petition urging France to reverse course and keep these pesticides out of its fields.

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The science on these chemicals is not genuinely in dispute. Research has found acetamiprid poisons honeybees and damages their ability to forage and remember, and a 2024 study indicated flupyradifurone can be lethal to some bees. France banned the neonicotinoid family in 2018 for exactly these reasons, and One Green Planet covered that decision at the time in France Begins the Fight to Save the Bees by Banning Toxic Pesticides. It was a victory then. It is being undone now. Supporters argue French farmers growing sugar beet and hazelnuts are disadvantaged against European competitors who may still use acetamiprid, which remains authorised at EU level until 2033. Beekeeping groups and environmental organisations counter that the bill was rushed through without real safeguards for public health or the environment, and Greenpeace said the government was trampling on science, health, the environment and the will of the people. You can read the reporting on the July 2026 vote via Phys.org. Sign the petition and tell France that two million signatures and a constitutional ruling should mean something.

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