MPs approved the government’s agricultural bill in committee on Saturday, notably validating measures to simplify disputes for water reservoir projects and new above-ground livestock buildings.
After 35 hours of debate this week, elected officials meeting in the Economic Affairs Committee approved at first reading the executive’s text intended to provide answers to the challenge of renewing future generations of farmers.
After the vote, the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau called for ensuring that the agricultural world finds meaning and understands what we want from it, and to give it the means to pass the immense milestone of generational renewal.
The deputies from the presidential camp (Renaissance, MoDem, and Horizons) voted for the bill. Those on the left (LFI, PS and Ecologist) opposed it. The right, the National Rally and the independents of Liot abstained.
If the debates were calmed, the opposition long deplored a lack of ambition in the bill. Many subjects are absent: income, land and adaptation to climate change, said David Taupiac (Liot).
The bill combines measures on training, operational transfers, or even the acceleration of litigation in the event of appeal against water storage projects or construction of livestock buildings, despite alerts of the Council of State on risks of constitutionality.
The government is also seeking the right to modify by order the repression of certain environmental offenses, for example by reclassifying criminal sanctions as administrative sanctions.
It is this contested aspect that the deputies approved on Saturday, despite criticism from the left, which, in addition to its opposition to legislating by ordinance, is concerned to see this reassessment of the scale of sentences being done to the detriment of of environmental protection.
The minister announced that the scope of this reassessment of sentences would be set in stone by the time the text arrives in the Chamber so that deputies can vote with full knowledge of the facts.
The deputies also took a step towards giving farmers the right to make mistakes, by approving LR’s initiative, the fact that the good faith of an operator is presumed during an administrative control, even if the right intends to go further. far in public view.
The text must now be examined in the Chamber from May 14.