French Minister of Ecological Transition Monique Barbut announced Wednesday that she would "submit her resignation today" to President Emmanuel Macron in protest to the reintroduction of harmful pesticides.

However, Macron did not accept her resignation, and Barbut will stay in her post due to the "urgency to address the consequences of climate change," her team said in comments carried by the AFP news agency. 

Government spokesperson Maud Bregeon later said that Barbut will stay in office.

What Barbut said about her resignation

In a post on LinkedIn, Barbut wrote that "contrary to the commitments that had been made to me, the government prevented any debate on the removal of this measure," adding that there had been "one environmental setback too many," since was appointed last October.

"Politics is not my world, and if this is what politics is about, it definitely never will be," said the former head of WWF France and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

What is in France's pesticide bill?

Barbut's statement comes just after lawmakers appoved a bill that will allow the pesticides acetamiprid and flupyradifurone to come back into use. They have been banned in France since 2018 and 2019, respectively.

Scientists say that the chemicals are dangerous to human health and are harmful to the bee populations that make agriculture possible in the first place.

Proponents of the bill argued that France's beet, apple, and hazlenut farmers need the pesticides to compete against their EU counterparts.

The substances are not banned in the EU but some member states limit their use.

Edited by: Rob Turner

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