France wants to ban domestic flights on routes where the train can travel in less than two and a half hours. If the Senate finally validates the law approved by the French National Assembly, flights between Paris and Lyon or Bordeaux could be bannede. This measure excludes connecting flights and aims to combat CO2 emissions.
The goal is to reduce pollutant gas emissions by 40% by 2030, and banning these flights would be part of the ambitious program promoted by Emmanuel Macron. Is about favoring the train instead of the plane to reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.
But although the National Assembly has adopted the new legislation, criticism comes from both sides of the political spectrum. For environmentalists, the planned goal is not very ambitious and prefers the initial proposal that prohibited flights be those that can be covered in train journeys in less than four hours. With this more restrictive measure, it would also be impossible to fly between Paris and Marseille, Nice and Toulouse, among others.
Other sectors accuse the government of promoting a measure that will have a high cost, at a time when the pandemic is bringing the airline industry to its knees, with a drastic reduction in the number of flights and the injection of public money into airlines (see aid to Air France, which will receive EUR 4 billion, and France already controls 30% of Air France - KLM).
For the Government, the train and the plane are complementary means of transport, and the Minister of Transport, Jean Baptiste Djebbari, asked the society and the opposition not to "dramatize the debate".