The Senate adopts a text recognizing the “share of responsibility of France” in the poisoning of the Antilles – Liberation

An advance in small steps. The Senate resulted in a compromise on Thursday, June 12 on a bill to recognize the « Share of responsibility » of the State in the Chlordecone scandal in the Antillesdespite certain disappointments on the real scope of the text and its compensation component. The upper room has adopted almost unanimously the text carried by the socialist deputy of Guadeloupe Elie Califer, already approved in February 2024 In the National Assembly, while making it significant changes.

This bill, very symbolic, is now recognized by the French State « Its share of responsibility in health, moral, ecological and economic damage » caused by Chlordecone, a pesticide used in banana groves in Guadeloupe and Martinique until 1993 despite WHO alerts on its danger. « It is a strong gesture of dignity and recognition with regard to all the victims »praised the Overseas Minister Manuel Valls.

Even if it will take a new examination of deputies on this text, he now seems able to succeed, while many parallel initiatives had aborted in recent years on this sensitive issue. The latest, in April in the Senate, ended in indignation, when the ultramarine and macronistic senators had chosen to remove a similar text, unhappy to see it « Denatured » by the right and the government.

The compromise found this time, however, left a « Bitter taste » to some: « It is a renunciation emptied of any symbolic significance, without any operational, financial or legal substance »regretted the senator from Martinique Frédéric Buval. His parliamentary group, an alliance between ultramarine and macronists, also abstained during the vote. He challenges certain declines compared to the version voted in the National Assembly, which evoked the « responsibility » of the Republic in the broad sense and not the « Share of responsibility » of the state as voted in the Senate.

Another reproach: the concept of « Moral anxiety damage » was withdrawn from the field of state responsibility, after a second deliberation requested by the government and negotiations between the executive and the right-centist alliance, the majority in the Senate. Others regretted the absence of a real compensation fund for the victims, even if the text still provides for the State « Sit » For « objective » compensation for « All victims » contaminated in a professional framework or not.

More than 90 % of the adult population in Guadeloupe and Martinique is contaminated by Chlordecone, according to the National Health Safety Agency (ANSES), which concluded in July 2021 to a probable causal relationship between pesticide and the risk of prostate cancer.