Once, it was believed the only thing that could break up a French protest was summer vacation. But this year, the French rallied on – at least online – and their perseverance was rewarded.

For weeks on end, citizens mobilised against a provision in the so-called Loi Duplomb (“Duplomb Law”), which sought to reauthorise acetamiprid, a neonicotinoid pesticide long banned for its suspected negative effects on pollinators and human health. The law, framed as a way to simplify rules for farmers, would have reopened the door to using acetamiprid. A citizens’ initiative against the bill received more than two million signatures, making it one of the most supported environmental petitions in France’s recent history.In response to the public outcry, the French constitutional court decided in August to strike down the controversial part of the legislation.

Nevertheless, the Duplomb Law marks a dangerous precedent: a rollback of green policies. At the European level, key pillars of the European Green Deal have been watered down, delayed, or abandoned over the past year. At the same time, national governments are pressing on with their own deregulatory agendas in the name of pragmatic reforms, which, in reality, only serve the interests of large-scale agribusiness.

This shift accompanies a change in the balance of power. The EU’s recently proposed Multiannual Financial Framework (its long-term budget plan, MFF) would grant greater flexibility to member states in how they allocate funding – including in agriculture. Although framed as a response to emergencies and inflation, the move reduces Brussels’ ability to enforce green conditionalities, weakening already fragile mechanisms for accountability.

Yet this story isn’t only one of retreat. Environmental groups, small farmers, and civil society are mounting strategic resistance. Across Europe, the future of farming is being contested. So who is shaping that future, and on whose terms?

From ambition to retreat

When the European Green Deal was launched in 2019, it marked a bold step towards environmental sustainability across all sectors, especially agriculture. Flagship initiatives like the Farm to Fork Strategy, the Sustainable Use Regulation (SUR), and the Nature Restoration Law (NRL) promised binding targets for food system transformation, pesticide reduction, and biodiversity restoration.

But five years later, the political climate changed radically. With European elections looming, the EU Commission declared a strategic pause on Green Deal regulations in early 2024. This shelved or delayed several proposals, including a directive on soil health and regulations on food waste, while promising a “simplification” of CAP compliance rules. Major farmers’ unions, including FNSEA – the largest agricultural union in France – celebrated the move as a win for “common sense.” In the run-up to the elections, environmental policies were increasingly framed as elite overreach and a threat to the livelihoods of “ordinary farmers”. The resulting public sentiment became a political boon for right-leaning parties, particularly in rural regions.

Now, in 2025, much of the ambition of the Green Deal has crumbled. The SUR, which would have made a 50-per cent reduction in pesticide use a legally binding target, was rejected by the European Parliament after a relentless lobbying campaign. Leading the charge were Copa-Cogeca, the powerful umbrella organisation representing European farmers and agricultural cooperatives, along with major agrochemical industry groups. They argued the regulation threatened yields, put farmers’ livelihoods at risk, and undermined European food sovereignty.

By the time it reached the Commission SUR had already been watered down, and if passed, it would have been largely ineffective as mandatory crop-specific rules and a legally binding framework were missing from the legislation. It was officially withdrawn by the Commission in early 2024, prompting environmental organisations to call it the symbolic collapse of the Green Deal’s regulatory backbone.

On the other hand, the Nature Restoration Law survived, but barely. Passed in a weakened form in February 2024, the law lost its teeth during negotiations between the European Commission, the Council of the EU, and the European Parliament.  Several restoration targets, including those on peatlands and farmland biodiversity, became conditional or vague. Agricultural land was granted major flexibilities, thanks in part to lobbying by member states aligned with industrial farming interests.

Over the last two years, farmer protests have repeatedly broken out across Europe, driven by economic pressure, the advancing Mercosur agreement, falling incomes, and a sense of institutional neglect. In response, politicians have sought to “simplify” regulations, framing green policies as a luxury in a time of crisis. This crisis rhetoric has been a hallmark of the Right since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. In the aftermath of the Russian invasion, the concept of food sovereignty has been invoked strategically – not to empower local food systems, but to justify loosening environmental standards and pushing protectionist trade measures. This shift has allowed national governments to deflect attention from systemic problems in the agri-food model by pointing fingers at Brussels.

Now, the newly proposed MFF revision gives EU members more flexibility in allocating funds under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). While framed as a way to respond to inflation and crisis, the reforms also weaken the Commission’s leverage to enforce environmental conditions. Critics warn this could create a fragmented patchwork of rural policies, where some states push ahead with agroecology while others fall back on high-input industrial models.In other words, by weakening its own enforcement power and letting national governments take the lead, the EU has opened the door to deregulation dressed up as pragmatism.

The newly proposed MFF revision could create a fragmented patchwork of rural policies, where some states push ahead with agroecology while others fall back on high-input industrial models.

Calls for deregulation are coming from multiple fronts. In early 2024, Spanish farmers protested the EU’s pesticide bans that they said would put paella rice cultivation yields at risk. In addition, EU member states like Italy, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, and Romania called for the reintroduction of banned pesticides in the summer of 2025. But by and large, the most ambitious regulation rollback attempt so far comes from France, and its Loi Duplomb.

Enter Duplomb

In early 2024, French Senator Laurent Duplomb introduced a bill promising to “simplify administrative procedures” for farmers. Officially titled “Bill for the Simplification and Reduction of Regulations Applicable to Local Authorities and Businesses”, the so-called Duplomb Law quickly became a flashpoint in France’s agricultural and environmental debate.

The bill claimed to reduce bureaucratic burdens and restore dignity to farming. However, beneath the language of simplification, critics identified a strategic push to dismantle environmental safeguards. Although the French constitutional court ultimately struck down an article that would have allowed France to reauthorise banned pesticides, including acetamiprid, its mere inclusion signalled a willingness to test the limits.

For the director of Générations Futures, a leading French environmental NGO campaigning against pesticide use and for sustainable agriculture, the timing of the Duplomb Law is no coincidence: “The collapse of the SUR and the failure of Farm to Fork left a vacuum. Laws like Duplomb are rushing in to fill it.” François Veillerette warns that even when censured, the risk of banned substances returning remains real. “The political will is still there. The strategy is simply shifting.”

Meanwhile, the pesticide industry itself has been quietly working to adapt (and thrive). One avenue for the return of banned pesticides is reclassification as biocides. This allows certain substances banned for agricultural use to continue circulating in domestic, industrial, or public settings, where regulation is less stringent. For instance, acetamiprid is found in common household items, like insecticides for home use. Other substances include propiconazole, used to protect wood from insects, or clothianidin, thiamethoxam, and imidacloprid, which are deployed as industrial insecticides. Moreover, some pesticides like Fastac, outlawed in France in 2020, are still being produced under industrial certifications and then exported abroad.

The pesticide industry itself has been quietly working to adapt (and thrive).

Veillerette says Générations Futures is preparing to challenge these cases one by one in order to prevent the pesticide industry from finding ways to reauthorise them for agricultural use. “It makes no sense to prohibit a molecule in the fields but allow its presence elsewhere. This loophole undermines both public health and regulatory credibility.”

Another overlooked detail is the possibility of a fast-track mechanism in the original Duplomb bill, which would have allowed for ministerial derogations for neonicotinoids – including acetamiprid and possibly flupyradifurone – with limited explicit constraints on the mode or length of use. Though this provision was not included in the final legislation, environmental groups remain concerned that such procedural tricks could reappear in future proposals. The concern is not only the substances themselves, but a broader shift in regulatory philosophy. “We’re replacing the precautionary principles [of regulatory authorisations] with a logic of efficacy [of production] at all costs – even when human or environmental health is on the line,” Veillerette says.

According to Kristine de Schamphelere, a policy officer for agriculture at Pesticide Action Network, the same strategy is underway at the EU level. “A similar TINA (There Is No Alternative) narrative is indeed also being developed over the last years, trying to force the EU and national governments not to implement EU law on pesticides, playing on the fear of food security.”

By framing environmental regulation as excessive or anti-farmer, the Duplomb Law won rhetorical ground even before its articles were debated. Yet as critics have pointed out, it is not small-scale farmers who stand to benefit. A spokesperson for the Confédération Paysanne – a French farmers’ union advocating for small-scale, sustainable, and socially just agriculture – has told the Green European Journal the union supports administrative simplification. However, Thomas Gibert also added that “the deregulation of social and environmental norms doesn’t work for small farmers. We need these norms to protect us and our citizens.”

According to Gibert, the Duplomb Law risks deepening the structural inequalities in the farming sector. He argues that France is moving towards “developing an agricultural system that will squash out the small farmers, always favouring a large enterprise-controlled agriculture.”  To genuinely help smallholders, Gibert says it would be better to simplify CAP payments. “We cannot forget that what is really needed is fair livelihoods for our farmers. This is the only way our small farmers can make a decent wage, by fairly pricing their products,” he adds. “Minimum prices, as promised by Macron, are what our farmers need. All other propositions simply fall hollow.”

Lobbying and resistance

Since losing its absolute majority in the French parliament, president Emmanuel Macron’s government has relied on the support of Les Républicains, the conservative party from which Senator Duplomb hails. The Right has used this leverage to steer rural and agricultural policy towards its own priorities. Meanwhile, the government’s uneasy alliance with the powerful FNSEA has further blurred the lines between public interest and corporate influence.

In recent years, Macron has increasingly made concessions to the farming lobby in an effort to contain rural frustration. Take, for instance, the 55 million euros diverted from the organics sector to young farmers, without consulting those who were affected (although the organics sector also has young farmers of its own). However, these concessions have only given further legitimacy to the far right. Moreover, they have failed to bring stability to France, a country that has now seen five prime ministers resign or be forced out of office in three years.

But even though major national and international lobbies are pressing for deregulation under the guise of easing burdens on farmers – consistently framing green reforms as economically unviable or politically naïve – the public, courts, and scientific community remain firmly opposed to the reintroduction of banned pesticides. According to a survey conducted by the European Food Safety Authority, awareness of EU food safety systems has risen by six per cent since 2022, and 67 per cent of Europeans now consider pesticides among their top food safety concerns.

Although national and international lobbies are pressing for deregulation, the public, courts, and scientific community remain firmly opposed to the reintroduction of banned pesticides.

These sentiments culminated in the two-million-strong petition launched by 23-year-old student Eléonore Pattery. What began as a grassroots initiative quickly evolved into a broad civic movement: environmental NGOs like Générations Futures, France Nature Environnement, and PAN Europe lent organisational support, while figures like activist Camille Etienne, YouTuber Jujufitcats, and model Charlotte Lemay amplified its reach across social media. Ultimately, the petition and public outcry had a decisive impact on the Loi Duplomb.

With or without Duplomb

In the European Union, deregulatory agendas are now at the forefront of policymaking. From national laws like Duplomb to the EU’s strategic retreat from environmental ambition, the trajectory is clear: environmental protections are being reframed as obstacles to productivity, and “simplification” is increasingly a euphemism for deregulation.

The July 2025 proposal for the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) only reinforces these concerns. With cuts of more than 20 per cent to the Common Agricultural Policy, and new mechanisms giving Member States greater flexibility over how funds are spent, Brussels is relinquishing tools that once enforced green conditionalities. Critics warn it may enable uneven implementation, undermining shared goals for sustainability. France’s decision to uphold the ban on acetamiprid marked a clear victory for science and civil society. But it’s only one battle in a much larger confrontation over the future of agriculture in Europe. What is under threat is the possibility of livable societies where food is healthy and farmers are fairly paid.