France has abandoned plans to allow sugar beet growers to use a banned pesticide again this year due to risks to bees, after a European Union court rejected such exemptions, the country's agriculture minister said on Monday.

After granting beet growers in 2020 an exemption of up to three years for a blanket ban on neonicotinoid chemicals, the government was preparing a third and final annual exemption to cover the 2023 crop.

However, in a ruling published on Thursday, the Court of Justice of the European Union said that member states cannot offer exemptions to the block's ban on seeds from crops treated with neonicotinoides. "Let's not ask... a third year of exemption for treated sugar beet seeds. It's over," Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau told reporters after a meeting with representatives of the sugar industry.

The three-year exemption was aimed at protecting crops from a disease that devastated the 2020 sugar beet crop, giving the industry time to develop other effective crop protection solutions.

The French government would cover any losses suffered by producers if the disease, known as yellow and aphid-borne viruses, occurred this year, Fesneau said.

France would also raise at EU level the issue of imports of sugar and ethanol biofuels from countries not subject to neonicotinoid restrictions, he added. Farmers and sugar manufacturers have warned that the EU's decision could lead to further decline in beet planting and threaten the future of sugar factories, while anti-pesticide associations welcomed the court's position for closing loopholes in the bloc's neonicotinoid ban.

Source: Agrolink