In an electoral context…
But this issue was very far from being a long, quiet river, as our colleagues at the Echo. Tensions were particularly high within the Walloon majority, all in the context of an electoral campaign. The MR and the PS have never hidden their desire to develop the airport, whereas Ecolo is much more skeptical on the subject. Environmentalists would thus have tried to add new environmental measures at the last minute to this new permit.
Finally, an agreement was reached, with protection “reinforced” local residents. The number of sound meters around the airport will be increased, as will fines for planes for non-compliance with noise standards. Finally, a working group will quickly be set up to analyze and accelerate multimodality between the airport, rail freight and road. But the threshold of 55,000 air movements authorized per year is maintained, as in the previous permit. On the Bierset side, we say to ourselves “relieved”. According to the airport, it would have been “surrealist” to close the infrastructure that “currently accounts for 11,000 direct and indirect jobs”.
