Is the government in the process of opening the door to dialogue over the highly-controversial plan for a new airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes near Nantes in western France? For the first time it has given signs of doing so, after a weekend of bloody clashes between gendarmes and protesters occupying the proposed site of the airport which left 100 people injured. A statement from the office of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault – who when he was Mayor of Nantes strongly backed the development - announced that a “dialogue committee” will meet this week “to outline the project and to hear all the parties involved”.
Meanwhile the environment, transport and agriculture ministries have made it clear that there will be no clearing of the rural site until a scientific committee has approved the methods chosen by the airport builders to offset the irreversible damage the project will cause to the area's distinctive hedge-rowed farmland (1). This represents a small victory for opponents, as the commission of public inquiry that approved the project after an environmental impact assessment had said site clearance could start before those methods had been scientifically validated.
The ministerial announcements are likely to delay the initial work on the site for six months, according to sources close to Agriculture Minister Stéphane Le Foll. Environment Minister Delphone Batho, for her part, said the announcements underlined the government’s desire to calm the situation.
However, the government statements have been met with scepticism from opponents of the airport, which it is estimated will cost more than 550 million euros and which is due to open on January 1st 2017. To begin with, opponents say the dialogue seems to be more of an opportunity for officials to explain the project than to open discussions about its future. This appeared to be confirmed by government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem who said on Radio J: “This is not about any backtracking on the airport project, there is no climbdown. This dialogue committee will outline to all concerned parties the reality of the work carried out, of their impact on biodiversity.”
For Arnaud Gossement, a lawyer specialising in environmental issues, the committee that has been set up is one of “monologue” rather than dialogue. He points out that the 2007 multi-party conference on the environment – the Grenelle de l'environnement - had invented a genuine system of discussion between partners who disagreed and which had proved its effectiveness during round-table talks in the autumn of 2007.
The association of local people opposed to the airport scheme, Acipa, and Cédépa, the collective of local councillors fighting it, say they will not take part in discussions with the authorities as long as the forces of law and order remain on site. “There will be no dialogue without a withdrawal of the police force,” said two local farmers Michel Tarin and Julien Durand. Meanwhile Dominique Fresneau from Acipa said: “We are going to lick our wounds and see what kind of discussion we can take part in with a government like this.” And Cyril Bouliguand, a member of the farmers union the Confédération paysanne, said they were ready to have a dialogue but only on how to stop the project - not on simply reducing environmental impact as the government wants.
On Sunday around 70 local councillors gathered in front of the prefecture – the offices of the official state representative the prefect – in the Loire-Atlantique département or county to demand the withdrawal of the gendarmes. Some chained themselves together before being met by the prefect. However, the Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls has so far ruled out any conditions being attached to the talks.
Last Saturday a demonstration in Nantes itself against the airport attracted several thousand people. A petition demanding a halt to the expulsion of the protesters occupying the site and the abandonment of the airport scheme altogether has meanwhile attracted more than 24,000 signatures.
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1: The French word is 'bocage' which describes a mixture of woodland and farmland, with pastures typically surrounded by hedges.
'One person risks losing their right eye'
The latest attempt to clear the protesters from the site, which began last Friday, lasted well into Saturday night. Around a hundred of those occupying the site and their supporters suffered injuries, some of them caused by stun grenade blasts, according to local regional councillor Geneviève Lebouteux of the green alliance Europe Écologie - Les Verts (EELV) .
A statement from the occupiers' medical team said that there had been a “peak of violence” on Saturday night which had left one hundred injured, “thirty of them seriously”. Around 20 people were hurt by stun grenades, including one person who was hurt in the lower abdomen, causing internal lesions. “One person risks losing their right eye,” added the statement. Other injuries were caused by the use of Flash-Balls.
“It is a heavy toll, the wounds range from scratches and grazes to broken ribs and head wounds requiring stitches,” said Gilles Denigot, a member of Cédépa, who gained access to where the activists are based on the site, which had been turned into a makeshift hospital. “At the moment when nationally there was a declaration of openness and dialogue [from the government], the forces of law and order were called back to the site at 10.30pm simply because of a barricade on a path which didn't even disrupt the traffic,” he said.
Since the launch of the initial attempts to clear the site, known as Operation César, five weeks ago 18 squadrons of 73 gendarmes have been working in shifts at the location. In all around 500 officers have been on the land at any one time “more or less visible but often at the path entrances”, says Denigot, who is also a member of Europe Écologie - Les Verts (EELV).
The prefecture itself said there had been “sporadic” confrontations during Saturday night and that no one inured had needed to be taken to hospital. “During the night there were attempts by small groups to rebuild barricades along the perimeter that we had taken over during the last two days,” said Patrick Lapouse, the director of the prefect's office in the Loire-Atlantique. A member of the riot police the CRS was hit on the head and knocked out by a paving stone during Saturday's demonstration in Nantes.
On a political level, leaders from Europe Écologie - Les Verts (EELV) – who have publicly rowed with their government allies the Socialists over the airport project - welcomed the government’s official announcements and calls for dialogue, describing them as “good news”. Ronan Dantec, an EELV Senator, said: “This creates some space for dialogue on the environmental question.” He said he hoped that this was a “calming gesture, a first step by the government”. The EELV has been calling for some days for the appointment of a mediator to help calm the tense situation in the Nantes countryside. The hard-left Parti de Gauche, however, have said that the government’s response is not the right answer. The Communist Party has attacked the use of force against the occupiers of the airport site, while reaffirming its support for the project.
The prime minister’s intervention came a week after between 13,500 and 40,000 people – depending on whose figures you believe – turned out at the project site to demonstrate their opposition to the plans. The timing of the protests comes at a bad time for the government, as this week sees the opening of a keynote national debate on the transition to a low-carbon energy economy. The rift between the government and its EELV allies over the Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport could harm the atmosphere of those talks. Much also depends on how well the prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and his interior minister Manuel Valls coordinate their policies towards the airport and the protesters during the coming days. The weekend's events, with offers of dialogue being accompanied by a police crackdown, suggested there were mixed messages coming from the government.
Elsewhere the UDI, the Union des démocrates et indépendants (UDI), the centrist party founded earlier this year by former minister Jean-Louis Borloo, called on the government to suspend the airport scheme. However as environment minister under President Nicolas Sarkozy Borloo had defended the project as being “compatible” with the government’s environmental commitments to the Grenelle de l'environnement.
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English version: Michael Streeter