File photo.
Paris: The French government let food giant Nestle sell bottled water despite the firm using a banned filtering method, media reported Tuesday.
According to Le Monde daily and Radio France, the offices of the prime minister and the president allowed Nestle to market the non-regulation water, against the recommendation of French health services.
The water subsidiary of Nestle, which in France owns the Vittel, Contrex, Hepar and Perrier brands, in September agreed to pay a fine of two million euros ($2.2 million) to close probes over illegal wells and treatment of mineral water. That followed a complaint brought by the Foodwatch association.
The deal ended preliminary probes into the use of unauthorised water sources and fraud for filtering its mineral waters -- a practice that is illegal in France where mineral waters are supposed to be natural.
But as early as 2023, the two media alleged, the prime minister's office had "favoured the interests of Nestle to the detriment of consumers" by granting an exception for the use of micro-filters, which Nestle said it was using to improve food safety.
In January 2023, the boss of the DGS health authority recommended "the immediate suspension" of authorisation for Nestle to sell water from French wells. An official report said the water was contaminated.
The recommendation was transferred to then-prime minister Elisabeth Borne's office.
But one month later, her office and President Emmanuel Macron's services authorised Nestle to continue micro-filtering, the media reports said.
They said the outcome was the result of intense lobbying, even involving a meeting with Macron's chief of staff, Alexis Kohler, with Nestle representatives.
Asked about the report, Macron said that he knew "nothing about these things".
On the margins of a visit to a medical facility near Paris, Macron added: "There is no understanding with anybody, there is no collusion."
Nestle said that, "like any company", it regularly holds talks with authorities overseeing its businesses. Any requests made to authorities are on public record, it added.
