Low-carbon label: "A distorted indicator becomes worthless" (V.Bellassen / INRAE)

'If we have decided to leave the GST (Scientific and Technical Group) on 01/09/2025, it is because we believe that no certification is better than a certification that turns four into one. We could have understood the French Ministry's initial decision to arbitrate between our recommended figures and the initial figures to facilitate the transition from an economic point of view, with the prospect of aligning the figures with the scientific results afterwards. But at this point, I think it's better to have nothing than a distorted thermometer', said Valentin Belassen, a research director at INRAE, in an interview with News Tank on 11 September 2025.

He and his two fellow research directors at INRAE, Laurent Augusto and Laurent Saint-André, quit the GST on low carbon level certification on 1 September 2025.

Following a public consultation in August 2025, the French Ministry again set the reference value for natural regeneration on forest wasteland at 1 m³/ha/year. This initial value was arbitrarily set in 2018 due to a lack of sufficient scientific literature on the subject, but…