A plane in Nice, in October 2019 (illustration).

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SYSPEO / SIPA

  • The government announced on Thursday the abandonment of the project to build a new terminal at Roissy airport.

  • In Nice, there are plans to expand Terminal 2 to accommodate more passengers.

  • Opponents of the Riviera project are taking advantage of Roissy's decision to call on the president of the metropolis Nice Côte d'Azur to also abandon the extension project.

Barbara Pompilli, Minister for the Ecological Transition, declared Thursday to give up the project to expand Roissy airport.

An announcement that makes people react even on the Côte d'Azur, where the third airport in France in terms of attendance is planning an extension of its terminal 2 by 25,000 m2.

"The abandonment of the Nice airport extension project must follow that of Roissy," said Xavier Garcia, first secretary of the PS in the Alpes-Maritimes.

"We ask Christian Estrosi to show the way and cancel this political will of major works to send a real environmental signal", indicates for his part Jean-Marc Governatori, elected ecologist in the metropolis.

For him, the government is going "in the direction of the citizens' convention and ecological awareness".

“Roissy is the result of decisions taken concerning the airport of London or that of Notre-Dame-des-Landes.

All these abandonments of projects linked to excessive environmental impacts strengthen our legal action which will be judged in 2021 ”.

The administrative court of Marseille must rule on an appeal against the building permit, granted at the end of 2019 by the prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes.

"Roissy is not comparable to the Nice project"

The group of environmentalists calls "then for the reason of the president of the metropolis" (Christian Estrosi had spoken for the project, the community being a 5% shareholder of the Société Aéroports Côte d'Azur) to avoid "greater disturbances climatic ”.

“An enlargement indicates more passengers, therefore more planes and greenhouse gases.

It seems to me that at this time of health crisis, it is necessary to think about everyone's health ”.

“The Nice airport project cannot be compared with the Roissy CDG terminal 4 project,” answers Franck Goldnadel, Chairman of the Executive Board of the Airports of the Côte d'Azur.

In Nice, the idea is to adapt an existing terminal to raise the level of passenger comfort.

A more fluid terminal is a requirement reinforced today by the need to respect the rules of physical distancing ”.

He adds: “The terminal is designed to make a positive contribution to our overall objective of being 100% neutral by 2030, as we have committed to because it brings with it more eco-responsible solutions than the old terminals were.

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Our airport file

The work was to start in 2021 but was postponed due to the current health context.

However, in October, the president of the management board of Aéroports de la Côte d'Azur assured

20 Minutes

that the expansion was necessary.

The extension of Terminal 2 would accommodate eighteen million passengers each year, or four million more.

Nice

Three times fewer passengers for France's third airport in 2020

Nice

The Nice metropolis sells the majority of its airport capital

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