French President Emmanuel Macron signed into law a modified bill that bars a bee-killing pesticide from being reintroduced after a petition signed by more than two million people.

The legislation has been at the heart of a major debate in France and sparked a student-initiated petition that was wildly successful.

Critics of the bill, adopted in July in a fractured lower house of parliament, say it was rushed through without proper debate.

The law was published in the government’s official journal on Tuesday after the Constitutional Council, the country’s highest court, struck down the contested provision about the reintroduction of acetamiprid.

The court said that the insecticides known as neonicotinoids posed “risks to human health” and was unconstitutional as it undermined the right

See Full Page