Paris (AFP)

They were a hundred from their march on Friday and ended several hundred near Matignon Saturday: the opponents of the megacomplex project Europacity have made their voices heard, while the government looks into the subject.

"We are tired, we have pain in our feet, but we are happy," smiles Dominique Damour, administrator of the CPTG, a group of opponents.

The demonstrators had left on foot Friday morning of the "triangle of Gonesse" (Val-d'Oise), agricultural land where must settle by 2027 this large center of trade and leisure. They finished their march Saturday in the late afternoon near the offices of the Prime Minister.

A delegation asked to be received at Matignon, without success.

"We were referred to the Minister of the Environment," Elisabeth Borne, explains the protesters, Bernard Loup, leader of the opponents.

The minister has conducted extensive consultations in recent weeks, receiving all the players in this controversial project, including the opposition.

"Rumors evoke an abandonment of Europacity," continues Bernard Loup, "but nothing was said, do not shout victory," he adds.

In addition to the abandonment of Europacity, opponents also claim the postponement of the site of the subway station that must serve the area, stopping all projects of urbanization of the site and ask for the "preservation of agricultural land" .

Among the demonstrators, elected EELV, including Julien Bayou, regional councilor and spokesman for the party. Chrystelle, engaged in a citizen movement in Bagnolet, came from Seine-Saint-Denis, the neighboring department. "We are all concrete at home too, we must stop these drifts," she said.

"There is more land," says Francoise and Jean, a retired couple from Val-d'Oise. Francoise, a farmer's daughter, saw the lands where her father worked to be gradually "concreted". "Now it's an industrial zone, a highway, housing".

"We would like to have a local agriculture", they add, convinced of the viability of Carma, the alternative project of the opponents.

They swept away the "ecological" measures presented Friday by the promoters of Europacity, who have committed to recreate natural areas in compensation for the construction of the complex.

"Greenwashing," mocked Bernard Loup.

He also lambasted the arguments put forward by the local elected officials, who made a bloc Friday around the promoters, to defend an "essential" project for this disadvantaged area. "Stop using the social difficulties of the territory for a useless project," hammered the opponent.

© 2019 AFP