🇫🇷 800,000 Sign Loi Duplomb Petition as Barnier and Dati Clash in Paris Snap Election
Public anger mounts over Duplomb pesticide law as France’s right fractures ahead of a high-stakes Paris by-election pitting Michel Barnier against Rachida Dati.
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This week
🐝Anti-Duplomb petition earns 800,000 signatures
🥊Right-wing Barnier vs Dati duel in Paris
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🐝Anti-Duplomb petition earns 800,000 signatures
As you may have heard over the past few weeks, a highly controversial agricultural law, named the “loi Duplomb” after Senator Laurent Duplomb (Les Républicains), has been in the news due to the intense debates that took place.
The goal of the law was to implement the conditional reintroduction of a banned neonicotinoid pesticide (acetamiprid), known to permeate the entirety of plants to protect them from sucking pests, which can also harm bees and other insects.
It also set out mechanisms for the raising of environmental thresholds for livestock buildings, the “simplification” of measures that currently restrict the construction of water storage and reserves, such as the much-debated and protested mega basins, and the facilitation of the expansion of farming.
And as is the trend in European politics right now, this is a response to the major agricultural protests that occurred back in 2024. It can be further explained that Haute-Loire, a stronghold of Les Républicains, has a strong agricultural sector.
And, as you can imagine, all of this will likely play into the ongoing drama regarding the Mercosur deal, which you can read about here:
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Ultimately, the law was adopted 316 votes to 223, with the Assemblée Nationale almost perfectly split on the vote. Even the centrist coalition, regularly decried by some as wanton deregulators without conscience, is seeing fractures internally due to opposition to the damage this law could cause to biodiversity.
We even saw our very own Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade, French deputy for the Benelux and member of the Commission for European Affairs, voting against it.
And the opposition hasn’t stopped just because the law made it through the legislative process. A petition was registered on the Assemblée Nationale’s website and garnered over 836,000 signatures in under ten days, far surpassing the 500,000 required to have the petition considered.
To summarise the article, the petition requests the law’s “immediate repeal”, a “democratic revision of the conditions under which it was adopted”, and a “citizen consultation of health, agriculture, ecology and legal stakeholders.”
In terms of next steps, it’s now up to the Conference of Presidents of the Assemblée Nationale to decide whether they’ll take it up and give it a debate, which is not necessarily guaranteed, as no petition has been debated in the Assemblées Nationale hemicycle in the history of the Fifth French Republic.
In terms of political support, the far-left La France Insoumise are naturally a strong supporter of this being debated, having been the party most in favour of public referenda for major policy decisions, and actively campaigning in favour of a more populist, public-favouring style of policy development.
However, they weren’t alone, with the Parti Socialiste calling for a debate on the petition “as soon as the school year starts”, joined by the leader of Europe Ecologie - Les Verts, Marine Tondelier, who came out swinging:
Further to the right, Presidential candidate Dominique de Villepin also came out against it, decrying a law adopted “without reflection” on Twitter:
“No to the Duplomb Law, passed without reflection and without consultation. A law dangerous to our environment, dangerous to the health of the French, and which distances our country from an agricultural model that protects both farmers and our environment.
While the right allies with the far right, we must, more than ever, listen to the legitimate aspirations of millions of our fellow citizens.
…Mr. President of the Republic, you have the power not to promulgate this law.
Mr. Prime Minister, you have the duty to listen to environmental associations and to work with your Government to imagine a law of reconciliation rather than a law of division.
Madam President of the National Assembly, you have the opportunity to quickly include a debate on the petition, already signed by more than half a million French women and men, and which continues to grow, on your institution’s agenda.
It is about the sovereignty of our agricultural model. It is about the protection of our environment. It is about the health of all French people.”
For the time being, there have been no public statements coming from the centrist coalition, which will likely be down to a strong effort from party whips who are trying to keep the wheels on the coalition, despite deputies actively taking pot shots at each other and openly talking about it being on life support.
None of this is being helped by the ongoing drama regarding the new budget proposal for 2026, which we’ll discuss later this week.
🥊Right-wing Barnier vs Dati duel in Paris
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So, things are getting very fun in the 2nd Constituency of Paris.
Jean Laussucq (Renaissance) has been forced to resign from his position as one of several deputies targeted for improper campaign accounts by the Constitutional Council, being banned from public life for one year alongside Stéphane Vojetta (Renaissance, Iberia) and Brigitte Barèges (UDR, Tarn-et-Garonne).
That sound in the background is the far-right Rassemblement National and their lackeys suddenly being very quiet about how they’re being bullied and politically victimised.
The left bank of the Seine is therefore now facing a snap election that promises to be incredibly dramatic, with Les Républicains looking at more conflict within their ranks, having invested former Prime Minister, European Commissioner, and Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier as their candidate.
However, shock horror, not everybody agreed to this nomination.
Current Minister of Culture Rachida Dati, who is positioning herself for the 2026 mayoral elections and attempting to secure the endorsement of both the centrist coalition and the right, has decided to enter the race.
The complication on this front, naturally, is that Dati doesn’t know how much support she will have for both this election and the mayoralty next year, as centrist Renaissance leader, Gabriel Attal, is apparently considering a mayoral run himself to build his profile and further emancipate himself from President Emmanuel Macron’s shadow.
And a part of this complication is that one potential candidate from the centre is Clara Chappaz (Renaissance), who is currently the Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Affairs. While nothing has been decided, she may put her name forward while keeping Jean Laussucq’s suppléant, Antoine Lesieur, to provide local firepower to her candidacy.
For those who support Dati, there are also questions about whether she’s running as a potential spoiler in order to extract support from Les Républicains for the mayoral election.
Hell, with the ongoing judicial investigation into Rachida Dati for “corruption and influence peddling” as part of the Carlos Ghosn case, many are going as far as questioning whether Dati will even be legally eligible to run for Paris mayor in 2026.
This, in itself gives us some idea about why she is pushing for the Paris 2nd.
And to add to the long list of right-wing candidates, Thierry Mariani from the Rassemblement National is also running, and hoping to do better than the 11% that Melody de Witte won last year.
Now, with the election needing to be run within 3 months of 11th July, the election can take place at any point before 11 October 2025, meaning that anything can happen during this election.
While many would assume that one candidate will have an advantage over the others, the reality is that polling shows that the two front-runners for the right aren’t particularly popular on the national scene.
Looking at the above list of Ministers, only 29% of respondents to the Harris Interactive poll say that they have confidence in Rachida Dati, a drop of 3% compared to the previous month.
Clara Chappaz, by comparison, trails Rachida Dati by 13%, which isn’t helped by the fact that this poll seems to indicate that right-wing ministers are currently more popular than those to their left.
Moving to the general rankings, Michel Barnier stays stable at 25%, but is likewise lagging behind Rachida Dati by 4%, and is even behind politicians that have diminished their presence in the public eye like Jean Castex.
While these polls are national and likely do not carry the same weight as a local election in Paris, they will raise many questions for the centrist partners of Les Républicains, who will be thinking long-term about how to maintain their position as kingmakers among the centrists.
Most notably, Renaissance will consider whether supporting Dati as a deputy for the 2nd constituency would be an advantage, potentially serving as a way to head off any challenge to leader Gabriel Attal’s still hypothetical run for the Paris mayoralty.
But, as always, polls are only snapshots of moments in history, and aren’t necessarily indicative of anything. Plus, we haven’t even seen how the centre or the right will fare against a left-wing candidate.
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Barnier and Dati - "choose your fighter"