The administrative court of Marseille rejected on Monday, October 3 the appeal of environmental defense associations against the extension of Nice Côte d'Azur airport, the second international hub in France after Paris.
“
Global warming
has won”
, lamented these three associations in a press release, considering that “
the most climaticidal project in our territory is confirmed
”.
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At the end of the Terminal 2 extension works, the airport, which welcomed 14.5 million passengers in 2019, before the Covid crisis, will have "
a capacity of 18 million passengers, i.e. the forecasts for the end of the decade
,” the airport said on Monday, before the decision.
In 2019, before the crisis, the airport mentioned a target of 21 million passengers within 10 years.
The 25,000 m2 project provides for the construction of six additional boarding lounges, a baggage check-in hall and baggage delivery.
"Millions of tons of additional CO2"
This project was contested by France Nature Environnement Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (PACA) and Alpes-Maritimes and by the Collective for ecological achievements Capre 06 who considered that the impact study was insufficient and demanded the cancellation of the prefectural decree granting a building permit for the extension of Terminal 2.
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For the administrative judge, “
the inaccuracies, omissions or inadequacies
” of an impact study “
are only likely to vitiate the procedure and therefore lead to the illegality of the decision taken in the light of this study only if they could have the effect of undermining the complete information of the population
”.
The associations also assured that this extension would result in 20,000 additional flights per year and therefore "
millions of additional tons of CO2
", which the airport management disputed, for which the increase in the number of passengers will mainly be by optimizing the aircraft load factor and increasing their capacity.
“
The correlation between the increase in the passenger capacity of the terminals and that of the number of flights has not been established
”, further estimated the administrative judge.
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