The Constitutional Council of France on January 31 ratified the legal veto on the production, storage, circulation and export of products containing active substances that have not been approved by the European Union (EU).
The ruling resulted from a lawsuit by the association of producers and the French Seeds Union, which claimed that the ban to export their products had serious consequences on enterprises and violated the freedom of trade.
The Council recalled that the law in force prohibits the production, storage, circulation and export of products such as herbicides, fungicides, insecticides or mite killers that have not been approved by the EU, due to their harmful effects on human and animal health, and the environment.
It also considered that according to the principles of the French Republic, ‘the protection of the environment, the common heritage of human beings, is an objective of constitutional value’, as well as ‘the protection of health’.
Source: Agropages
