The European Commission accused France of excessively high concentration of nitrates in drinking water and started proceedings against France in the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Nitrates from nitrogen fertilizers, and especially from animal waste, can pollute water if the amounts are too large to be absorbed by plants. The European directive, which defines drinking water quality standards, defines a limit that cannot be exceeded.
Grand Est and Burgundy are concerned
“In France, the maximum concentration of nitrates associated with drinking water supplied to part of the population has been exceeded for a long time,” the Commission explained in a press release published on Thursday.
According to Brussels, 107 distribution zones are affected in seven regions out of thirteen regions in mainland France: Burgundy-Franche-Comté, Centre-Val de Loire, Grand Est, Hauts-de-France, Île-de-France, Occitanie and Pays de la Loire.
The Commission already sent a letter of formal notice to France in October 2020, followed by a reasoned opinion in February 2023. But “the efforts made by the French authorities so far are not enough to fully respond to the complaints,” the EU believes.
Nitrate plans are not useful enough
The Ministry of Environmental Transition could not be reached on Friday morning. In a note published at the end of 2023, the French Environment Agency decided that les “plans nitrates” documents prepared by the authorities to combat agricultural pollution “were not in line with environmental challenges”.
He then said it was “very unlikely” that the current nitrate plan would “allow France to improve water quality and reduce emissions”. He also pointed to a “lack of desire to change a very degraded situation.”