A rare mess in the Senate: the examination of a bill to compensate victims of the ravages of chlordecone in the Antilles was cut short on Wednesday, with overseas elected officials, Macron supporters, and the left expressing outrage at seeing this initiative "distorted" by the right and the government.
It's a scene to which the hushed corridors of the Luxembourg Palace are not accustomed... On Wednesday afternoon, the debates aimed at recognizing the State's responsibility for the chlordecone scandal, a pesticide used in Guadeloupe and Martinique until 1993 despite warnings about its dangers, came to a halt.
Guadeloupe Senator Dominique Théophile, a member of the RDPI group composed of overseas senators allied with Macronist elected officials, decided to withdraw the bill he was proposing from the debate after the adoption of an amendment supported by the government.
Mr. Théophile hoped to have the State's responsibility for "moral and health damages" suffered by the West Indian population enshrined in law and to grant them compensation.
But the Senate majority, an alliance between the right and the Centrist Union, has significantly reduced the scope of its initiative by limiting France's recognition to "health damage" only.
This would exclude, according to the author of the text, the "moral prejudice of anxiety" caused by the use of this pesticide spread in banana plantations and responsible for massive and persistent pollution of soil and water in the French Antilles.
However, this "anxiety" damage was recognized by the Paris administrative court of appeal in a decision dating from March, opening the way to compensation for victims who can demonstrate it.
"I could not allow a distorted text to flourish," Mr. Théophile told the press. "We cannot write a text that excludes what we have already won" in court, he added, dejected, assuring that he did not want to "go against what the people of Guadeloupe and Martinique want."
– “Contempt for anguish” –
He was supported in his approach by several overseas senators from different groups, by the entire left and by his group, the Rally of Democrats, Progressives and Independents (RDPI), which is largely composed of Macronist elected officials who support the government.
Several overseas senators, including the socialist Victorin Lurel, have indicated that under these conditions, it would be better to reintroduce in the coming months a "better" bill, already adopted in the Assembly at the initiative of the socialist Elie Califer on the same subject.
The debates in the chamber were in any case tense.
"It is undeniable that awareness of contamination has been a source of apprehension and anxiety for some audiences. However, equating it with harm would result in a complex and innovative procedure," worried Les Républicains Senator Marie Mercier.
Health Minister Yannick Neuder agreed, supporting the initiative subject to certain more "legally correct" editorial changes.
"Moral harm is the emotional pain associated with suffering from the disease (...) It is recognized. Anxiety harm is the fear of developing the disease. And we won't dwell on the latter point," he told the senators.
Environmentalist Yannick Jadot castigated the government's "ambiguity": "You are unable to decide for health at the expense of economic interests. This vote shows contempt for the anguish, anxiety, and health damage (suffered by) our fellow West Indians," he said, while the leader of the Socialist senators, Patrick Kanner, denounced it as "a farce" and "a sequence that should be marked with a black stone" for the West Indian population.
More than 90% of the adult population in Guadeloupe and Martinique is contaminated by chlordecone, according to the French National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (ANSES), which concluded in July 2021 that there was a probable causal relationship between chlordecone and the risk of prostate cancer.
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