French airports announced Tuesday, October 19, that they had filed an appeal with the European Commission to obtain the cancellation of the ban on internal air links when the trip can be made by train without a connection in less than two and a half hours, provided for by the recent French Climate and Resilience Act.
“We filed this complaint on September 17th”, jointly and severally with the European branch of the Airports Council International (ACI Europe), declared the president of the French Airports Union (UAF), Thomas Juin, confirming information from the newspaper The gallery. He considered that article 145 of the Climate and Resilience Law, adopted in July in France, was “Legally unfounded”.
This article provides for the prohibition of “Regular public air transport services for passengers relating to all air links within French territory, the journey of which is also provided on the national rail network without a connection and by several daily connections lasting less than two and a half hours”.
Mr. Juin recalled that this article was based on a European text, Article 20 of Regulation No. 1008/2008, providing for exceptions to the exercise of traffic rights. “In the event of serious damage to the environment”, but, according to him, for “Local, temporary reasons” and not applicable to the subject of global warming.
Bringing together 165 airports
The European regulation is worded as follows: these restrictions have “A limited period of validity, not exceeding three years, at the end of which they are re-examined”.
“We twist European law to apply a measure that will be more ineffective from an environmental point of view”, affirmed the leader of this gathering of 165 airports: the lines thus prohibited from March 2022 represent “0.23%” emissions from French domestic lines.
If the text nevertheless provides for exceptions for correspondence, the connections falling within the scope of the law are:
- Marseilles-Lyon
- Paris-Orly – Nantes
- Orly-Lyon
- Orly-Bordeaux
The law especially ratifies the existing one, since the government had forced Air France to give up the routes concerned in return for financial support in May 2020. It prohibits competitors from rushing into the breach.
“Carbon neutrality” by 2050
During parliamentary debates, the UAF had already contested the abolition of these lines, in particular Orly-Bordeaux, on which, before the health crisis, more than 560,000 people traveled per year.
Airports are not unaware of the challenges of global warming, stressed June, recalling that the sector was committed to “Carbon neutrality” by 2050.
For the associations grouped together in the Climate Action Network, things are different. “With this complaint against the removal of links that can be completed in less than two and a half hours, the aviation sector confirms that it prefers to close its eyes to the reality of its climate impact: in twenty years, emissions from the aviation sector have more than doubled”, representing 5% of greenhouse gas emissions. “It is urgent to close the internal lines for which there is an alternative train in less than four hours, as recommended by the citizens’ convention for the climate”, which could be done “Now without strong constraints for users”.