France's bedbug crisis sparks political row as insect ‘scourge’ continues
France faces a bedbug crisis that has sparked a political row as the insect 'scourge' continues to spread across the capital Paris before next year's Olympic Games.
A wave of panic and disgust has spread across the country as social media users have been publishing footage of the insects crawling around in high-speed trains and the Paris metro.
Meanwhile, a rash of online articles about bedbugs in cinemas and even Charles de Gaulle airport has been posted by travelers.
Franc’s transport minister Clément Beaune said he would convene public transport operators next week “to inform them about countermeasures and how to do more for the protection of travelers”.
Representatives from Paris city hall wrote to the prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, with a plea for a dedicated national taskforce to deal with what it called a “scourge” of the insects.
The deputy mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, told French TV: “No one is safe. You can catch them anywhere and bring them home, and not detect them in time until they have multiplied and spread.”
He said Paris authorities had received an increase in calls for help, and private companies had had an unusually high level of requests for fumigation in recent weeks. He said the government must coordinate action at every level of the state “as fast and as efficiently as possible”.
Mathilde Panot, head of the leftwing La France Insoumise party in parliament, said bedbugs had “caused hell for millions of families in this country” and the government must act.
Bedbugs, which had largely disappeared from daily life by the 1950s, have made resurgence in recent decades and become increasingly resistant to chemical treatments.
The French national health and sanitary body, Anses, found that between 2017 and 2022, 11% of French homes had been infested.
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