(ANSA) - PARIS, 11 FEB - After years of projects and polemics, the French authorities have given up on the expected extension of the Parisian Roissy-Charles de Gaulle international airport: the planned "4 / o terminal" of the airport, judged to be "obsolete ", will never see the light.
For the ecologists, the day after the government presented the "climate law", it is a great victory.
It was precisely the logic of the fight against global warming, coupled with the negative prospects of an increase in air traffic, that gave the final blow to a project already in difficulty.
The Minister of Ecological Transition, Barbara Pompili, made official the abandonment of the hypothesis of 4 / o terminals in the newspaper LeMonde.
The government asked the manager, Aeroports de Paris, to "abandon the project and present a new one, more consistent with the objectives of combating climate change and protecting the environment".
The ADP group took note and its president, Augustin de Romanet, announced that he wanted to allow himself "the time to reflect on the issues concerning the future of the airport".
The project had a cost of 7-9 billion euros, the goal was to build a fourth terminal by 2037 to increase the reception capacity of 40 million passengers a year: "it is a project - said Minister Pompili - which is not it corresponds more to the government's environmental policy and to the needs of a sector in full flux, facing the green plane of tomorrow ".
"We will always need airplanes - added the minister - but it is a question of having a more reasoned use of them and of achieving a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions throughout the sector".
The ecological association Greenpeace, while accepting the decision with relief, judged the announcement "ambiguous" when imagining another project: "it is not acceptable - the NGO has hinted - to further increase air traffic".
(HANDLE).