The National Assembly approved on Friday the revision of the scale of penalties applied in the event of environmental damage, as part of the examination of the agricultural orientation bill, despite strong opposition from the left. The government initially planned to seek the power to change the sentencing scale by order, but ultimately tabled an amendment to enshrine these changes directly into law.
The amendment adapts the regime for punishing attacks on the conservation of non-domestic animal species, non-cultivated plant species, natural habitats and sites of geological interest, and “reserves the classification of offense to cases in which the acts were committed intentionally”, details the government in its explanatory statement. The text creates a new administrative measure consisting of carrying out an awareness course on environmental issues, which may in particular be recommended in the event of unintentional damage to the environment.
It “further presumes that any intentionality is excluded when the infringement is committed in the context of the execution of a legal or regulatory obligation”. And it provides that prosecutions can be dropped in the event of agreement on financial compensation between the farmer responsible for an offense and the administration, with the approval of the prosecutor.
Environmentalists announced that they would refer the matter to the Constitutional Council in the event of final adoption of the text
Environmentalists, socialists, communists and rebels have denounced in unison this reduction in sanctions, which is moreover adopted without an impact study, these provisions having been added by way of amendment. Former Minister of Ecology Delphine Batho criticized an adaptation of the law which, according to her, will apply to all types of infrastructure, well beyond farmers. “By putting the notion of intentional nature of the destruction of nature (the amendment) delivers a license to destroy nature and general impunity. We are no longer in an agricultural subject at all. (…) It does not “There has never been such a brutal and violent challenge to all European directives on the protection of protected species and habitats”, she said, denouncing the absence on the benches of the Assembly of the minister of the Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu.
Environmentalists announced that they would refer the matter to the Constitutional Council in the event of final adoption of the text. “If you stay with the status quo, you have people who, for unintentional crimes, are threatened with three years of imprisonment or a fine of 150,000 EUR,” justified the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau. The RN deputy Lionel Tivoli denounced an “authoritarian and punitive approach”, of which the planned “re-education course” would be the manifestation.
At the start of the evening, the deputies also approved an article which simplifies the legal regime concerning hedges. In particular, it subjects any project to destroy a hedge to a single prior declaration, and provides that any destruction measure be compensated by the replanting of a length at least equal to that previously destroyed. Common amendments from the majority and the right introduce third class (450 euros maximum) and fifth class fines (1,500 euros maximum, 3,000 in the event of a repeat offense) for illegally destroying a hedge, depending on the case. “What is proposed seems to me to be unsuitable for cases which exist and which are cases of serious infringement”, criticized Delphine Batho.