In February prime minister Manuel Valls promised that work on the construction of a new airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes near Nantes in western France would begin “in the autumn”. Then in late June a controversial local referendum pronounced in favour of the bitterly-opposed scheme. Yet despite that, building work on the site – which is currently occupied by protesters – still shows no sign of starting.
Now a new administrative hurdle could delay the start of the project until next year. Back in 2014 the European Commission had asked for a wide-ranging impact study on the project that dealt not just with the effects of the airport itself but also of any other infrastructure that would be required to provide access, such as new roads, road junctions, railways or tramways. But according to Brussels the “indirect and cumulative” effect of these on the environment were not spelt out in the initial documents sent by French authorities and officials said that reports on different aspects of the scheme had been kept separate. So the Commission says it still needs more clarification. Potentially, the project could be in breach of European environmental regulations and place France at risk of a fine.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
“An infrastructure project of this type inevitably includes other projects, yet for Notre-Dames-des-Landes the overall approach has deliberately been put to one side,” says Florence Denier-Pasquier, a legal expert and national secretary of the environmental body France Nature Environnement which is opposed to the airport scheme. In March the French state decided it would resolve the situation by revising the 2007 local building and development plan for the area - the Schéma de Cohérence Territoriale (SCOT) Nantes-Saint-Nazaire. France's environmental authority, the Autorité Environnementale (AE), said that this amendment was to “allow in particular the putting in place of several projects planned to reinforce the area's accessibility, in particular the plan for the Great West airport [editor's note, the name for the Notre-Dame-des-Landes project] and its road access”.
However the AE, which reports to the government's environment and sustainability advisory body the Conseil Général de l’Environnement et du Développement durable (CGEDD), has itself now highlighted the lack of clarity in this new local development plan or SCOT as it is known. In its official opinion handed down on July 20th, the authority concedes that the SCOT “shows a certain ambition in respect of the environment”. But the body, whose ultimate boss is the government's Ministry of the Environment, says that the airport dossier remains “relatively incomplete” and needs to be improved. It says that the current plan “shows weaknesses that call for further information” and “still has a framework that is not very restrictive … in particular in relation to the use of space and the organisation of transport”.
The AE also notes that “the evaluation still doesn't provide the necessary proof to understand the SCOT's environmental impacts and the scope of the measures taken to avoid, reduce and compensate for them (relating, in particular, to the use of space taking into account the public plans and infrastructure, greenhouse gas emissions and the protection of natural spaces and wetlands)”. The authority recommends that the administrative body responsible for the local plan should “detail the impact of all the plans connected to the airport project, such as they are understood today, and the environmental information that justify their carrying out”.
This warning from the country's environment authority comes just four weeks after the local consultation or referendum which backed the airport scheme, and several months after the CGEDD – to which the AE reports – described the airport project as “overinflated” and pointed to the lack of studies detailing alternative solutions.
None of these administrative reports can stop the project, however, and nor do they have any bearing on the decision by Brussels. “On paper the procedures are coming one after another but we're not respecting the spirit, which is to reduce the impact to a minimum,” says Florence Denier-Pasquier. “One has every right to be astonished that at this stage we still have such vagueness. We can certainly see there are contrasting opinions. The problem is that all this should have been done well in advance,” says Denier-Pasquier, who says that the different reports published so far show that “at least a part of our criticism has been recognised as well-founded”.
The administrative body in charge of the local plan still has time to rewrite the document during the summer before it becomes the subject of a public inquiry, which will most likely be organised from September onwards. Then the local plan has to be agreed by local councillors, and appeals against it will still be possible for a further two months. Thus the SCOT or local plan is unlikely to be approved definitively before the end of 2016 or even the start of 2017, and only then can it be submitted to Brussels. “And again, that's if things go very quickly,” notes Florence Denier-Pasquier.
In other words, unless the government wants to ignore the rules, the work at Notre-Dame-des-Landes is not about to start any time soon. “The Commission is closely following the regularisation procedure that's in progress. In the meantime, the construction work for the airport project at Notre-Dame-des-Landes must remain suspended to ensure that the procedures are respected,” the European Commission spokesman Enrico Bivio said recently in an article in regional newspaper Presse Océan. “It's European law as it suits, in a way,” says Florence Denier-Pasqier.
Even if the new local plan is drawn up quickly, gets backed locally and is then approved in Brussels, opponents of the airport scheme still have ways of delaying the start of the work. In particular there are judgements pending over appeals against decisions made by the local prefect concerning the law on local water sources and protected species, and on the formal declaration of public utility made in relation to increasing the size of local roads. It remains to be seen how the government will make good Manuel Valls's promise that work on the airport will start “in the autumn”.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter