A man was arrested on Monday after driving a Mercedes saloon into a terminal building at the airport serving Lyon, France's second-largest city, and then speeding onto the runway area chased by several police cars and an overhead helicopter before he was wrestled to the ground when attempting to flee on foot.
The French government has announced that a five-decade plan to build a major airport hub at Notre-Dames-des-Landes, close to Nantes in north-west France has been abandoned after fierce opposition by environmentalists.
French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced on Wednesday that a controversial plan to build a major new airport near Nantes in north-west France, a project first mooted 50 years ago and which was bitterly opposed by environmentalists who prevented construction work from commencing by occupying the rural site, has been definitively abandoned. The decision ends decades of fudging by successive governments, infuriating supporters of the 600-million-euro project at Notre-Dame-des-Landes who argued it would have provided a much needed boost to the region’s economy.
In February prime minister Manuel Valls promised that work would begin on a controversial new airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes near Nantes in western France by the autumn. Yet despite a much-criticised local referendum that backed the plan, there are no immediate signs that construction work is about to begin, or even that the protesters who currently occupy the site face imminent eviction. The latest hold-up has been caused by demands from Brussels for information on the wider environmental impact of the project, which could see the start of work delayed until next year. Aurélie Delmas reports.
While all of Europe, including France, has been focussed on the shock result of the Brexit vote, a more local referendum campaign has been taking place in western France. On Sunday June 26th nearly a million voters in the Loire-Atlantique département or county were asked for their verdict on plans for a new airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes near Nantes. The referendum itself, whose outcome the government says it will respect and which has been criticised for its many shortcomings, was won by suporters of the scheme. But Mediapart's environment correspondent Jade Lindgaard argues that the issues at stake go beyond the local airport project: and that they affect everyone in France and beyond.
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