The associations Zero Waste and Notre Affaire à tous are asking the government to cancel three decrees linked to the Green Industry bill, which they say represent a “massive and systematic unraveling of industrial environmental law” and consequently an increase in the risks of industrial disasters. “While the government adopted several decrees relating to the Green Industry law between the two rounds of the legislative elections, Notre Affaire à Tous, Zero Waste France and their local branches filed appeals on Friday, September 6, requesting their cancellation.”they said in a statement Monday.
If these written requests to the administration were to remain a dead letter, the associations plan to go before the Council of State within two months, they indicated. Among the texts targeted by the two associations, a decree of July 5 which allows to accelerate certain urban planning or environmental procedures for “strategic industrial projects”according to the title of the text published in the Official Journal. These provisions “undermine the fundamental principle that the polluter pays”they judge. “The government is increasing the risk that in the event of pollution or industrial disaster, the costs of covering the clean-up will fall exclusively on the State, or worse, that it will not be carried out due to lack of resources.”believes Adeline Paradeise, lawyer for Notre Affaire à tous, quoted in the press release.
Other incriminated texts include a decree issued on the same day, which aims to reduce implementation times and facilitate access to industrial wastelands, and a decree granting the qualification of “major project of national interest” to the future chemical recycling plant of the American industrialist Eastman in Seine-Maritime. As such, it can benefit from these implementation facilities and “to more easily deviate from the law on protected species”according to the applicant associations. The latter fear “significant impacts” of this Eastman group project on biodiversity and air quality, and point the finger “a high risk of dispersion of microplastics in the environment”Contacted, Eastman did not immediately respond.
The concept of “major national interest project (PINM)” was introduced in the Green Industry Act promulgated on October 23, 2023, a text that aims to enable the reindustrialization of the country while promoting the ecological transition. This PINM status allows industrial projects of importance for the ecological transition or national sovereignty to benefit from accelerated procedures or administrative exemptions.
