Green MPs are carrying a bill to ban private jet flights, which will be discussed by the end of March in committee.
Led by Julien Bayou, the Green MPs will defend their private jet flight ban bill on March 28 in the Committee on Sustainable Development and Regional Planning. Green elected officials, who believe that ” the whims of a handful of privileged people have never polluted so much “, feed on the observation made by ADEME in 2019. According to the agency, the air sector accounts for 5.3% of total emissions in France, and private jets, for 0.4%. They also highlight another data, from a report by the NGO Transport & Environment: private jets are 5 to 14 times more polluting than commercial planes with passengers. They are in fact twice as likely to be called upon for very short journeys. At a time when everyone is invited to show energy sobriety, this seems absurd.
Climate transition, justice, end of whims: environmentalists draw their arguments against private jets
Insisting on the notion of “whim” to justify the ban on private jet flights, the author of the law, Julien Bayou, uses the arguments of the urgency and the need for climate transition as well as the idea of justice. But what is the text aiming for more precisely?
With only two overlapping articles, the bill aims to “ the prohibition of non-scheduled passenger air transport services which are not commercially operated “. We are talking here about flights for which users will pay on demand to privatize a device, or who will benefit from it from another person or a company.
The ban would thus apply to flights of less than 60 passengers, a qualification chosen to evoke the case of private jets which historically do not exist under this name in French law. ” In addition, the 60-passenger threshold makes it possible to maintain certain flights such as those chartered by a travel agency. “, tries to justify the deputy of Paris Julien Bayou.
Some adjustments are planned, what future for this bill?
Certain exceptions come to attenuate the drastic side of the text a little. So-called flights of general interest can still be operated, such as rescue, medical or civil security flights, but also the activities of flying clubs. An evaluation of the provisions would be carried out three years after the entry into force of the law.
The text is also limited to the metropolitan territory, “ due to the geographical and topographic specificities of the overseas departments and regions, overseas communities, New Caledonia and the French Southern and Antarctic Lands ».
You are no doubt wondering about the potential of this law with deputies and senators. The government would undoubtedly deliver fierce opposition to this bill, and the same should be true for a large part of parliamentarians, who are generally hostile to this theme.
Source : National Assembly
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