In a struggling rural region of Burgundy, at the gates of the Morvan national park, locals have mounted a campaign to halt a private company from creating a vast wood-processing industrial site which would bring hundreds of jobs to the area. Local politicians support the project as offering a much-needed boost to the flagging local economy, while its opponents argue the environmental cost for a short-term gain is unacceptable. The future of the site now hangs on a ruling due from France’s highest court, the Council of State. “What’s being played out here is truly a debate about society,” says Christian Paul, socialist Member of Parliament for the region and one of the project’s supporters. Anne Duvivier reports.
Town after town looks on in horror and dismay as the furnaces close down in the Fensch Valley in Lorraine in north-east France. The only lifeline left to the locals is the nearby Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in the shape of its banks and its factories. Nearly 80,000 workers from the Lorraine region now make the daily commute to tap the growth and higher pay on the other side of the border. Rachida El Azzouzi reports.
