Emmanuel Macron is going to Fouras (Charente-Maritime) this Thursday to defend his environmental record and present his ecological transition project.
The choice of location is no coincidence. The municipality of Fouras will receive state funding to clean up the Pré-Magnou site, a former landfill now buried whose waste threatens to flow into the ocean.
The opportunity for Emmanuel Macron to defend his policy to fight against ocean pollution, unveiled last February at the “One Ocean Summit”.
The candidate president should also present his environmental project and detail the key measures of his program: the construction of six new generation nuclear power plants, the multiplication by 10 of French solar power, the establishment of 50 wind farms at sea by to 2050 or the conditioning of the remuneration of the managers of large companies to respect for environmental and social objectives.
A mixed record
Emmanuel Macron will also have to defend himself against criticism, while the environmental and left-wing opposition is tackling his record. Aborted release of glyphosate, too slow reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, application deemed too partial of the measures resulting from the Citizens’ Climate Convention… There are many grievances.
“These last five years have enabled the reduction of CO2 emissions by 12% in France (…) The five-year period has recorded the closure of the last coal-fired power plants in the country but also paved the way for an exit from all disposable with the ban on many single-use plastics and the destruction of stocks of new unsold products”, argues the candidate’s campaign team before his arrival in Fouras.
Chance of the calendar (or not), the displacement of Emmanuel Macron coincides with a cumbersome deadline for the government.
The government put at the foot of the wall by the Council of State
Seized by Grande-Synthe, a municipality on the northern coast which considers itself threatened by the rise in sea level, the Council of State last July gave the government nine months to “take all useful measures” in order to bring back the greenhouse gas emissions at a level compatible with France’s objectives in this area, i.e. a 40% reduction by 2030 compared to 1990.
The government therefore had until March 31, 2022 to achieve an objective that the Council of State deemed “not achievable” if “new measures” were not adopted “quickly”.
The government is not legally required to justify its actions, the Council being able to examine the situation on its own, specifies AFP. Once the actions of the government have been studied, the Council of State will be able to reopen the investigation of the case and convene a new hearing between the parties. The whole thing should take several months.
As part of another legal action called “The Case of the Century”, the State had been summoned by the courts to “repair” by December 31, 2022 the consequences of its unfulfilled commitments in the fight against global warming.