The members of the citizens' convention for the climate gathered in hemicycle on Sunday, February 9, during their fifth working weekend.
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F. Pouliquen / 20Minutes
The Climate and Resilience bill and its sixty articles arrive on the table of the Council of Ministers on Wednesday.
A text which must take up a large part of the 146 proposals of the Citizen's Climate Convention.
The fact remains that Mélanie Cosnier has difficulty finding the spirit of the report in the convention in this bill.
"The text includes a large number of our measures, but very often reduces their scope," regrets the president of the association Les 150.
And the examination of the bill by Parliament has not yet started, points out Mélanie Cosnier.
This review could result in good surprises, but also bad ones, with further setbacks on the clauses of the bill.
“Change the French model and accelerate the evolution of mentalities”… This is the ambition of the “Climate and Resilience” bill presented to the Council of Ministers on Wednesday.
Housing, mobility, advertising, food ... The text, of around sixty articles, intends to build on the work of the Citizen's Climate Convention, launched at the request of Emmanuel Macron in October 2019.
The 150 citizen members were tasked with identifying measures to reduce France's greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030, in the interests of social justice.
The "conventional" submitted their report on June 29.
It includes 146 proposals, if we remove the three jokers automatically issued by the President of the Republic.
It is a large part of these that the “Climate and Resilience” bill is supposed to take up.
But is the account really there?
Mélanie Cosnier, president of the association Les 150, which brings together the participants in this first Citizen Convention, answers
20 Minutes.
Are you already expecting surprises on the bill?
We have been in regular contact with the Ministry of Ecological Transition in recent weeks and have been regularly informed of updates on the text, so that we normally have a good knowledge of what will be presented this Wednesday in the Council of ministers.
On December 7, the government gave a first overview of the Climate Bill while announcing the start of consultations on the text.
Have the citizens of the climate convention been involved in this work?
Working groups have been set up in which conventional members have been integrated.
This is the case, for example, on the question of the energy renovation of buildings where two conventional and two substitutes participate in the work under the aegis of Emmanuelle Wargon [Minister of Housing].
The same goes for the advertising framework.
Members of the “Consuming” group have met Roselyne Bachelot [Minister of Culture] on this subject on several occasions.
But the consultation began when the writing of the articles of the bill was already very advanced.
We were not consulted or very little between June 29, when we submit our report to Emmanuel Macron, and early December, when the government presents the first draft of the text.
This is not what the President of the Republic suggested to us this summer.
He had told us that we would be involved in the drafting of the various bills incorporating our proposals.
Since December, we have mainly been discussing adjustments at the margin.
Do you find the spirit of your proposals in this bill?
No, the account is not there.
The government may say, the text is generally lacking in ambition.
Indeed, it takes up a large number of our measurements, but very often it reduces their scope or takes only part of them.
A typical example is that of the energy renovation of buildings, a key proposal in our report because it concerns an area that emits a lot of greenhouse gases in France.
We demanded the obligation of energy renovation of buildings by 2040, while increasing financial aid at the same time so that the most precarious households have almost zero out-of-pocket expenses for these renovations.
We are very far from that today in the bill.
The mandatory nature was not retained, we remain on the incentive.
There are still other setbacks on other themes.
We asked for a ban on advertising of polluting products, that will be limited to those in favor of fossil fuels.
We proposed a ban on domestic flights when an alternative by train is possible in less than four hours, it is finally reduced to 2:30 in the bill.
The obligation of a daily vegetarian choice in the collective catering that we proposed becomes a two-year experiment on a voluntary basis.
We come back to Emmanuel Macron's promise to transmit your proposals “without filter” to parliament… Are we far from it today?
Yes.
In fact, Emmanuel Macron exercised a first filter and the government a second.
We suspected that this Convention would not be able to revolutionize everything in nine months of work.
But we are inevitably disappointed that our proposals are so diminished.
And consideration of the bill in Parliament has not even started yet.
This step [from March 29] could result in good surprises, but also bad ones, with further setbacks on the articles of the bill.
The Convention will meet for a final working session on February 26, 27 and 28.
What will be the stake?
The main stake will be precisely to take stock of the way in which our 146 proposals are taken up.
It does not come down to the “Climate and Resilience” bill.
The 2021 finance law also incorporates part of our measures and there are again setbacks *.
Other proposals have been incorporated into the recovery plan, others have taken the form of decrees and for still others - such as the crime of ecocide - the executive assures us that they will be brought to European level by the France.
During these three days, we will thus list everything and issue a final opinion to the executive on the recovery of our work.
This will then be the end point of the Citizen's Climate Convention.
It will be dissolved, as will its governance committee.
Are you afraid then that you will lose all means of making your voice heard on the way in which your proposals are taken up?
No, there remains the Les 150 association which brings together members of the Convention who wish to do so and who will continue to exist.
It has 120 members, of which around fifty are active.
Since the beginning of January, the association has started meeting with groups of deputies to prepare for the parliamentary examination of the Climate and Resilience Bill.
We explain to them why we arrived at these 146 proposals, what our journey has been.
At the same time, we are always regularly called upon for various and varied interventions.
We have about 20 requests per week, which makes us say that, whatever the case, this Convention was not in vain.
Not only have several of our proposals been taken up, but we have also made it possible to keep climate issues in the news in a context marked by the health and economic crisis for a year.
And today we are still helping to educate the French on this subject.
It was another of our strong proposals: to establish real environmental education in France.
May every citizen have the same awareness that we have had during our nine months of work.
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* The 2021 finance bill was to take up a flagship measure of the “Move” group of the Citizen's Convention: that of introducing a car penalty for the heaviest vehicles, from 1.4 tonnes.
“The bar was finally reduced to 1.8 tonnes by the executive, so that the measure only concerned a very small number of vehicles, regrets Mélanie Cosnier.
And, in early September, the auto penalty was simply removed from the finance bill by the Senate.
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