The petition launched by Eleonore Pattery — an unknown university student from Bordeaux with a focus on environmental rules — calls for repealing the text, arguing that it is “a scientific, ethical, environmental and health aberration.”
On Saturday the number of signatures passed the threshold of 500,000. Beyond that threshold, the heads of parliamentary groups or parliamentary committees can propose to organize a parliamentary debate on it.
The president of the National Assembly economic affairs committee, Aurélie Trouvé, from the left-wing France Unbowed party, said she will make that proposal in the fall.
“It is the first time it happens in the history of the National Assembly,” a jubilant Trouvé told POLITICO over the phone on Saturday.
But, for the debate to happen, the proposal has to first get the nod of the National Assembly’s Conference of Presidents, an organ which gathers key lawmakers including the leaders of permanent parliamentary committees like Trouvé. The Conference of Presidents will meet again on Sept. 12.
“I hope that we will be able to have this debate,” Trouvé said, warning that ignoring the petition would be a “democratic denial.”
While the text can’t be repealed during the parliamentary debate, the success of the petition is a blow for the government and for farmers’ lobbies that have defended the measure on a symbolical level.
France’s Constitutional Council is also looking into the text and could censor part of it if the council considers them to be contrary to the constitution.
