PARIS — France will seek guidance from Brussels on the definition of mineral water following a high-level scandal involving Perrier-producer Nestlé Waters that reached all the way to the office of President Emmanuel Macron.
A senatorial report, released this week, claimed the Swiss-owned group successfully lobbied the French government — including one of the president’s closest aides — to obtain authorization to sell as mineral water a product that had been filtered in a way that authorities previously deemed altered its composition.
Now, Paris says the European Commission should intervene to establish an EU-wide framework on the issue.
“[France] will be contacting the European Commission to find out its position, and to ask about its intentions regarding a possible revision of the European directive defining original purity and the status of microfiltration, so that we can have harmonization at the European level,” Véronique Louwagie, France’s junior minister for trade, told the Senate during a question session on Wednesday.
French health officials had determined that any filtration below a 0.8-micron threshold could risk changing the water’s natural state — yet Nestlé lobbied the French government to allow microfiltration at 0.2 microns through local executive orders.
Past regulations were intended to ensure that natural mineral water remained pure and unaltered — a key justification for the premium price paid by consumers.
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