Redevelopment of Nantes airport: employers' organisations want to meet Elisabeth Borne

Le Figaro Nantes

"The Great West remains grounded!": this is the scathing formula used by employers' organizations to summarize the "total inaction" of the State on the redevelopment of Nantes-Atlantique airport. In a joint letter, they believe that "nothing has moved" since the abandonment of the infrastructure project in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, in January 2018. Arguing that they had "played the game collectively" and shown "patience and dialogue for five years", they urged the authorities to "act" and "respect" their commitments.

The signatories of the letter

The document is signed by the Loire and regional branches of Medef and CPME (Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises). In addition, there is the Club des Trente - an organization that brings together sixty Breton bosses - as well as the association Les Ailes pour l'Ouest which campaigned for the airport transfer project in Notre-Dame-des-Landes.

The timing of this position is not trivial. It comes shortly after the "rant" of Christelle Morançais, the president of the Pays de La Loire Region, on the subject. On May 23, the elected had published a text assuring that "too much time has been wasted in pure conjecture" while deploring "the feeling [...] a profound contempt for a territory that is struggling to ensure its development". In a vocabulary similar to that reused by the bosses, it encouraged the State to "move" and "engage, by the end of 2023, the first modernization work of the airport".

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'Vital infrastructure'

The demand of the employers' organisations is more or less the same. They want "the State to guarantee rapid modernization deadlines to ensure the sustainability of a vital infrastructure for the Pays de la Loire" without setting a precise deadline. Another nuance: they request a meeting with the premier, Élisabeth Borne, "so that she clarifies her intentions for this strategic file".

This would be an opportunity for representatives of the economic world and entrepreneurs to present their arguments in the face of what they describe as a "real bad move" on the part of the State. According to them, Nantes-Atlantique airport needs investments to "adapt its capacity" due to "peaks of congestion and saturation". It must also "modernize" - being considered "too old" - and be part of the process of "environmental transition" with, for example, the installation of electric charging stations, the construction of energy-efficient buildings or the development of soft mobility development.