The mayors of two Paris suburbs this month won a small but significant legal victory in an escalating battle against central government over the powers of local councils to issue by-laws banning or restricting the use of chemical pesticides and herbicides across their communes.
They are among a growing number of mayors around France who since the spring of this year have taken measures prohibiting the use of chemical-based phytosanitary products in their towns and villages, which the government argues are illegal because only it has the power to regulate use of the products. The mayors say they are entitled to do so because the government is failing to protect their local populations from the known or suspected dangers of the chemical-based substances used in pesticides and herbicides, notably glyphosate (see more on the scientific debate over its dangers here).
Regional prefects, representing the government, have been swift and largely successful in their case-by-case challenges against such by-laws before local administrative tribunals. The latest example was on Wednesday, when measures barring the use of chemical pesticides issued by mayors in around 20 communes in the Val-de-Marne and Seine-et-Marne départements (equivalent to counties) east and south-east of Paris were suspended by a local administrative tribunal.
The same day, an administrative tribunal in Rouen, in the northern Seine-Maritime département, similarly suspended a by-law issued by the mayor of the small town of Sotteville-lès-Rouen prohibiting the use of chemical herbicides on the commune’s territory. The tribunal ruled in favour of the local prefect’s argument that only the ministries of agriculture, health, environment and consumer affairs were empowered to enforce such measures.
But on November 8th, the administrative tribunal of Cergy-Pontoise rejected a demand submitted by the local prefect for the urgent suspension of by-laws issued earlier this year by the mayors of the Paris suburbs of Sceaux and Gennevilliers, which have decreed a total ban on the spraying of chemical pesticides and herbicides on public or private properties. Although the court’s decision is a provisional one ahead of a definitive ruling yet to come, it was nevertheless a boost for the association representing around 120 mayors who support the campaign.
One of the founders of the movement, Daniel Cueff, mayor of the village of Langouët in Brittany, north-west France, described the Cergy-Pontoise tribunal’s decision as opening up “a breach” in their legal battle with the government.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
A French law introduced in 2017, known as the “loi Labbé”, prohibits the use of synthetic phytosanitary products (which include glyphosate) by the services of the state or local authorities in green areas, roads or on public paths. A second prohibition under the law was introduced on January 1st this year which extends that ban to the use or stocking of such products by private individuals. But companies sub-contracted for the upkeep of co-owned buildings (like apartment blocks or private building estates) and transport infrastructures are allowed to continue using the substances up until 2021.
The by-laws issued by Sceaux and Gennevilliers stipulate that “any product containing glyphosate and other chemical substances, and notably those containing endocrine disruptors, used against organisms considered to be pests” are banned “across all the territory of the town”. Anyone found flouting the by-law faces a 38-euro fine.
“Our aim was to complete the loi Labbé which banned the use of pesticides in public places, excepting cemeteries and sports fields, from 2017, and private use of them by citizens from 2019,” said deputy mayor of Sceaux, Florence Presson, speaking to Mediapart. “Henceforth, use [of synthetic phytosanitary products] in our commune by private lessors, on co-owned property and the railway lines of [Paris public transport body] the RATP is also banned.”
Sceaux has four rail stations serving the RER network, the express train lines linking the Paris suburbs via the capital, and which is jointly run by the RATP and the national rail operator, the SNCF. “We thought that we were a zero-pesticide town because the municipal services had stopped using them in 2009,” said Presson, who is head of the Sceaux council’s energy transition and circular economy programme. “Then we discovered that two-thirds of the green spaces were in reality still affected, in part because of the practices of the RATP. Our awakening to the issue is quite well received, inhabitants want alternatives.”
In June, the RATP suspended the use of synthetic phytosanitary products across its network. Previously, a sub-contractor was hired to spray herbicides along the Paris region’s railways twice a year, in the autumn and spring, using a product made by Swiss company Syngenta called Touch Down EV, 30% of which is made up of glyphosate. The weeding along the tracks is now done mechanically, and the RATP says it is engaged in further developing non-chemical solutions to track maintenance in a transition it estimates will cost 4 million euros.
Meanwhile, in Sotteville-lès-Rouen, where the mayor’s by-law banning chemical herbicides was suspended by the Rouen administrative tribunal last Friday, almost a quarter of the land on the commune is taken up by marshalling yards of the national railways operator, the SNCF. Unlike the RATP, the SNCF continues to use chemical phytosanitary products which,according to a report presented this week to the lower house, the National Assembly, is estimated to amount to around 40 tonnes per year.
A same issue viewed differently between town and country
While the prohibitions in Sceaux and Gennevilliers concern the use of chemical phytosanitary products in an urban environment, those issued by mayors in rural areas also concern the use of such substances on crop fields adjoining habitations. This was the case of mayor Daniel Cueff, whose by-law imposed a ban in his village on the use of chemical pesticides any closer than 150 metres from habitations, and 100 metres around buildings of professional use, which had met with opposition among local farmers. On October 25th, in a case triggered this summer by the local prefect, the administrative tribunal in the Breton town of Rennes overturned his ban. In an interview in August with website Konbini, President Emmanuel Macron said he supported Cueff “in his intentions”, but said the mayor must abide by the law.
In September, the French government began consultations in preparation of a decree, expected to be introduced on January 1st, which will regulate the minimum distance from habitations that must be kept during the spraying of chemical herbicides and pesticides on neighbouring land – essentially, crop fields. But so far, the distance under consideration is between five and ten metres. Cueff considers that to be a risible order of distance, not least because of the airborne contamination from the products, and he has vowed to lodge a legal appeal against the decree if it keeps to that limit.
Following the ruling of the tribunal in Cergy-Pontoise, Cueff summed up the legal confusion. “For the Rennes tribunal, it’s not for mayors but for the ministry of agriculture to decide on the issue of pesticides,” he said. “For the tribunal in Cergy, on the opposite, there is a failure of the State and nobody can today deny the dangers of pesticides. Mayors are therefore authorised to intervene.” There is no date announced for a definitive ruling by the Cergy-Pontoise tribunal, which could take many months.
“The mayors who established by-laws in towns filled in the holes of a [tennis] racket,” commented Corinne Lepage, a former French environment minister and now a lawyer and environmental activist, who has represented a number of mayors who are part of the movement to ban the use of chemical phytosanitary products. “The use of pesticides was already prohibited in numerous cases. In the countryside it’s different; there is an important pressure on the part of farmers.”
Sceaux deputy mayor Florence Presson agreed. “The discussion on the question of pesticides is perhaps easier in a town because there are no farmers,” she said. “But the issue should not stop there. The fundamental issue is the health of inhabitants. For the moment, the legitimate right of the urban mayor has been recognised, and one cannot see why the same right for the rural mayor would not be.”
Although the Cergy-Pontoise tribunal ruling is provisional, Lepage is largely confident of the final outcome. “The ruling is very well constructed,” she said. “It would be difficult to take a contrary direction the next time.”
In her ruling announced on November 8th, the sitting judge at the Cergy-Pontoise administrative tribunal set out: “With regard to the sufficiently established presumption of the danger and enduring harmful effects over time for public and environmental health from products that the challenged by-law prohibits in the commune of Sceaux, and in the absence of sufficient regulatory measures taken by the ministers with tenure for special policing, the mayor of this commune can have in full right considered that its inhabitants were exposed to a serious danger which justified that he prescribe the contested measures.”
During the hearing, the tribunal had heard testimony from Jean-François Deleume, a doctor and spokesman for an association of doctors set up to raise awareness of the dangers of chemical pesticides, the AMLP. He told the tribunal that the issue at stake was “a problem of public health”, and cited from a report published by France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research, INSERM, in 2013 (and which is to be updated at the end of the year), in which a panel of experts reported on the effects on public health from contact with pesticides. “Local populations can become victims of asthma attacks, asthmatic malaise, allergies and reactions on the skin,” Deleume told Mediapart. “Those particularly vulnerable are pregnant women, with risks of miscarriages, premature births, malformations at birth, the development of brain tumours and disorders in the spectrum of autism.”
For the government, the issue is fast becoming a hot potato. With the annual congress of the mayors of France due to be held next week, and nationwide municipal elections due next spring, it has a clear interest in delaying any definitive decision regarding the right of mayors to intervene with by-laws on chemical pesticides and herbicides. To validate them would be to recognise the weakness of the state in regulating the issue, and also to hand the role of mayors an added legitimacy amid a broader and longstanding row simmering between them and President Macron over their powers.
Meanwhile, the French government has recently re-confirmed plans to introduce a flat ban on the use of glyphosate-based products on January 1st 2021, despite comments by Macron in January that “even in three years’ time we won’t be able to do so at 100 percent, we won’t, I think, manage to”. The planned prohibition has met with outspoken opposition from a section of farmers, who are the biggest group concerned by the ban, and notably from the major farmers’ union, the FNSEA. “The prohibition of glyphosate is an additional ball and chain around the feet of French farmers regarding the international scene,” said Christian Durlin, one of the union’s experts on the issue, in an interview published this week in the French business weekly L’Usine Nouvelle. In the preparations for the ban, one French parliamentary report has raised the prospect of possible derogations.
In Daniel Cueff’s village of Langouët, the majority of members on his council want to make the commune into a model of ecological transition. Cuef argues that “in face of those who settle back on the agricultural model in which they were formed and which they don’t want to escape from”, he wants to promote “a joyful, participative agriculture that develops the relations between town and country”.
“Every legitimate combat ends up, sooner or later, by becoming a legal combat,” he added. “We’ll get there.”
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- The French version of this report can be found here.
English version, with additional reporting, by Graham Tearse