Europe 1 with AFP 5:37 p.m., March 15, 2024

Climate activists and representatives of airport residents' associations, received at the Ministry of Transport on Friday, said they feared a "backpedaling" by the government which promised to study a cap on the number of flights.

Mobilized this week across France at the call of the “Stay on Earth” coalition and the French Union Against Aircraft Nuisance (UFCNA), activists – around fifty, according to an AFP journalist on site – gathered in a street near the ministry under a banner reading “Health, climate, let’s cap air traffic”.

Members of a delegation who met at the end of the morning with the air transport advisor to the Minister for Transport, Patrice Vergriete, expressed their concern.

“Where are we now? We don’t know.”

We have "no certainty of the follow-up of the commitments of (former minister) Clément Beaune on the study of traffic capping. Hence for us some fears of backpedaling", explained Chantal Beer-Demander, president, on site. of the UFCNA.

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After receiving supporters of capping flights at airports in the Paris region on May 9, 2023, the ministry mentioned "very short-term" impact studies in order to "establish and analyze several scenarios of additional restrictions on Ile-de-France airports (capping, curfew, etc.)".

“Where are we now? We don’t know. And that worries us,” said Ms. Beer-Demander.

The movement asks to be received by Mr. Vergriete himself.

“The increase in air traffic (...) is not acceptable,” said Charlène Fleury, coordinator of the Rester sur terre network, mentioning the “vital threats” represented, according to her, by the health effects of noise and fine particle air pollution, as well as the carbon footprint of the aviation sector.

A possible drop in flights

The movement was galvanized in France by the decision of the Dutch government to reduce the number of annual flights from 500,000 to 440,000 at Amsterdam-Schiphol airport, in order to combat noise pollution.

But the project, contested, was then suspended.

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Asked by AFP, Mr. Vergriete's services confirmed that "the minister's office received a delegation to listen to their requests and transmit them to the minister", without further comment.