Just a month before important local elections in France, the bitter battle over the Great West airport in west France will once again return to the headlines this weekend as opponents stage another protest. Political figures such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Martine Billard from the hard-left Parti de gauche will be at the demonstration on Saturday February 22nd against the building of the airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, north-west of Nantes. The 'red hat' protest movement from Brittany is also set to be involved in the protest march and rally through Nantes, with one of its leaders Christian Troadec, the mayor of Carhaix, scheduled to appear.
The weekend event takes place three weeks after opponents of the Great West airport launched a raft of legal appeals against state decrees signed last December that effectively give the developers the green light to start work whenever they want. The appeals have been lodged by wildlife protection charities, local environmental and farming groups and local councillors, but also by the green party Europe Écologie-Les Verts (EELV). The EELV has two ministers in President François Hollande's socialist administration, but the 550 million euro airport project was one of the issues the greens and the Socialist Party agreed to differ on before entering government. Before becoming prime minister in May 2012 Jean-Marc Ayrault was mayor of nearby Nantes and remains a strong advocate of the new airport.
On Friday February 21st the president of the EELV group in the French Senate Jean-Vincent Placé predicted on BFMTV that the “pointless” project would not go ahead. “There are already 144 airports in the country, why put the 145th here? It is a fertile agricultural area and also very important from the environmental point of view.” He added: “The law is on our side.”
The latest legal appeals, which largely focus on the inadequacy of the compensation for damage to wildlife and the environment, could take between three to six months to be heard, according to experts. But technically they do not prevent the construction work from starting. Though the building work is extremely unlikely to start before the March local elections – this would be deemed to be too explosive politically – it could begin immediately once those polls are over. The airport is scheduled to be completed in 2017.
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If, however, bulldozers move in before the legal appeals are completed opponents say they will immediately seek an emergency court injunction to get the work stopped, on the grounds that it is a criminal offence to destroy protected species. One of the species that would be at the centre of any such injunction would be Arvicola sapidus, better known as the southwestern water vole, which is found on the construction site. This vole was made a protected species in France by the environment and agriculture ministries in September 2012. As part of the project, the developers have agreed to move any protected species to other areas.
So far the protesters have singularly failed in their legal attempts to get the project scrapped. Earlier this month the administrative court at Nantes ruled against 26 landowners who refused to give up plots of their land to make way for the airport. The court decided that the state had acted legally in declaring that their land should be made available. According to one calculation that makes 52 legal actions that have been won by developers Aéroports du Grand Ouest – which is 85% owned by international construction firm Vinci – since the scheme was first proposed.
Though the public authorities have claimed they are following planning rules to the letter, opponents say the state has manipulated the law to suit its own purposes. Last December a group of 25 legal experts launched an online petition against the airport, claiming it was not just an environmental and economic “horror” but a “judicial horror” too. “The state endlessly cites the law to justify its plan. But the law has been 'modernised' just to allow this project to go ahead. In reality it has become considerably more difficult to build a wind turbine than an airport,” said the lawyers.
And while the government has always insisted that no work would begin on the airport until all the legal avenues have been exhausted, there has been a change of tone in recent months. In December, government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said that after a period of dialogue that had “confirmed the benefit of the Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport project” it was now “time to move on to the preparatory works before the construction”. Moreover, after the official decrees were issued in December the sub-prefect or local state official in charge of the case, Mikaël Doré, said: “From now on we have a free hand to carry out the works. On the ground the mapping of the area has been carried out in readiness for the transferring of protected species.”
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English version by Michael Streeter