France's largest protest camp has won: France's government announced on Wednesday evening that it would not want to build Notre-Dame-des-Land airport on west coast. The dispute over major project has been as great for years as Stuttgart21 station. Only that resistance in France, unlike in Baden-Württemberg, actually never slow down.
On contrary, vast terrain became increasingly densely populated, despite some evictions. Hundreds of opponents have been camping in woods for years, farmers illegally order confiscated fields with organic vegetables, families living in tree huts, students in improvised municipalities. They have built libraries, established bakeries and carpenters – and have now reached ir destination.
France's prime Minister Edouard Philipp announced that it would improve connections for express trains to Paris airports instead of airport. Moreover, Government wants to dissolve "illegal zone" that has been growing in this place for years, until coming spring and to release land again for agriculture.
"Crazy activists"This ends a decade-long posse. The airport was supposed to be built since 1960s, but not a single excavator has been driven until today, no access road has been tarred. The protests of residents and environmentalists were too great, and each government disagreed on wher such a giant airport in wasteland would make sense at all.
President Emmanuel Macron himself was actually in favour of project, but had already promised in election campaign to have it fully evaluated by mediators. And that, although majority of citizens had expressed ir opinion in a survey two years ago. However, many affected villages and towns were unable to vote at that time, and critics accused pro-airport politicians of circulating false figures about new jobs.
So interrogation could not settle dispute. The Socialists, ruling in many halls of region, were divided, conservative Republican majority for construction, which was once to transport about nine million passengers annually. Conservative politicians reacted accordingly harshly to that of ir project. They complained about "kinking" of macros and called it a "political disaster". For m, head of state has given some "crazy activists" right that he has "surrendered", according to Republicans.
For Macron, however, much more is at stake than convincing a sworn group of airport opponents: He also wants to file his role as an international climate activist. For this he made Environmental Minister Nicolas Hulot, famous in France, and in December he organized an informal climate summit in Paris with representatives from all over world. A new major airport does not match climate policy. Hulot is now also big winner: He described airport as "inhuman and ruinous".
Date Of Update: 19 January 2018, 12:02
