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AB 2000 studies

Alain Boublil Blog

 

The French Brexit

The British decision, approved by a referendum, to exit from the European Union, the Brexit, has become a reference as a mistake made by the people. It is beginning to pay the consequences. Growth has slowed, the currency has been devaluated by 13% and both internal and external deficits have jumped. It is just the start because if United Kingdom is still a member of the UE, at least until 2019. But negative anticipations will soon leave the place to negative decisions: companies will reduce investment and some will even leave the territory. In some few years from now, British people will pay the consequences of this choice. It is not possible to go, by itself, against the deep and irreversible transformations of the world, which, year after year, is more open. People as goods, services and information become more mobile and accessible. To shelter behind borders, even if you are an island, isn’t day after day making any sense. It is what the British people, with a short majority, has not understood.

The decision about the building of the Notre-Dame des Landes airport has not the same consequence, of course, but relies on the same logic: the denial, the denial of the technical progress, the denial regarding the will to travel in good conditions, the denial of modernity. If the project was launched, it is because the current airport had a too short runway for long-range airplanes. Its purpose was to allow to those who live in the province to travel all around the world without being obliged to go to Paris to have a connection. And instead of increasing the pollution in a 300 000 residents city, it has been chosen, at that time, to occupy agricultural land in an area with few inhabitants and, atop of that, with a better location.

In that debate, the most surprising point is that, at no time, the issue of the geographic interest of the proposed implantation has been rose. The current airport is located at the south of Nantes. It is easy to understand why elected representatives from Vendée are in favor of its maintenance. But the development of both economic and tourism activities is located north of the Loire River. It is one of the few zones in France to enjoy an industrial renaissance with Saint-Nazaire shipyard, aeronautic and thousands of suppliers. It is not incompatible with the tourism activity which is growing inside the large area from La Baule bay to La Vilaine estuary and even to the south of the Morbihan region. The transfer of the airport was not only generating the disappearance of the pollutions caused by air traffic and traffic jams around the city. Its new location permitted to reduce by one hour the time to travel to that whole area. Regarding the extension of the existing runway, it is of course a pipe dream because we don’t know why the inhabitants and the local authorities wouldn’t oppose to the project with the same force as the one which has driven the “Zadists” and in front of which the State has surrendered. Heavy procedures will be necessary and the works regarding the runway extension are not near to start if even they start one day.     

What is the most concerning is that decision, which is not isolated, contributes, in a spectacular way, to put in question what has made the French economic and technological successes and France modernity, may it pleases to the “declinists”. We have the annoying habit to attack all what is working well in our country and to what, in a certain manner, makes our competitors envious. Some are even employing themselves to force us to do without. We must not be naives. The dissent about Fessenheim came from Germany where local Greens didn’t accept that the power plant feeds the German network and competes with their coal-fired power plants. The two reactors age, presented as the oldest French ones has no significance because these ones, as all the others, are checked through detailed audits by the Nuclear Safety Authority and investments are done when needs have been identified. That argument is not more convincing than the existence of a seismic risk in the area. Strasbourg cathedral has been built near 1000 years ago and nobody thinks it is necessary to evacuate the zone around it. The decision of the State could also be challenged because the power plant belongs to a listed company ruled by private laws, EDF, to which it seems it has not been granted the right to choose which site should be closed to fulfill the capacity ceiling fixed by the law.

The trial regarding high-speed trains and major infrastructures, which we should abandon, is quite so worrying. The pretext has been given by the several breakdowns occurred in some major Paris stations for a year. They resulted from insufficient investments in the network maintenance. It is likely but it doesn’t come from the construction of new high speed lines, clamored all around France by elected people from all the political parties. These failings are resulting from a mistake by SNCF management which wrongly identified risks and did not ordered the necessary repairs. The amount of requested funds was without any possible comparison with these needed by the construction of new lines, which, most of the time, were built through public-private partnerships and did not necessitate SNCF money.

Progress and modernity critics which are underlying in the denunciation of the nuclear industry and major infrastructures and which lead to the abandon of the new airport has always existed but had never, until now, lead to significant decisions. Some, in the left, in 1981 were hostile to nuclear power plants and were proposing the rebound of coal production. They didn’t obtain satisfaction and France reduced its CO2 emissions and its fossil fuels imports. In the same time, thousands of qualified jobs were created and French people were guaranteed to have access to the cheapest electricity prices in Europe. During the same period, Channel tunnel was built along with the high speed rail lines which serve three quarters of the territory.

What is worrying in the government decision is that it backs up the fact that it won’t be any more possible to decide important projects in the future. These progresses were not progresses, some were saying. Opponents will be encouraged to block any attempt to continue in that direction. Don’t be wrong. If the government choice is a denial, it doesn’t involve decisions in order to address the questions the concerned territories have risen. No alternative and credible solution to the French Western areas aerial dessert has been proposed because the increase of the current capacities of the existing airport will face the same obstacles than those faced by the Notre-Dame des Landes one. Regarding the evacuation of the “ZAD”, it is still theoretical, which will strengthen the determination of all those who, everywhere in France, have decided or will decide to block any important project.

The government choice is going much further than a question related to regional development. It is a symbolic refusal with heavy long term consequences. If France breaks with its history, with the “old world” or with “old politics”, as some are saying, and renounces to our tradition of modernism and progress, French people will have to pay during a long period the heavy consequences as the British people when it decided to leave the European Union.               

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