France's climate plan: NGOs and experts expect more concrete

Trajectories "rather ambitious but..."

“These are + rather ambitious + trajectories, but there are not yet the measures to achieve them”, regrets Anne Bringault, director of Programs at the Climate Action Network joined by AFP.

"We have a beautiful picture and beautiful figures, but we are waiting for concrete measures", summarizes the expert. The RAC, which brings together around twenty French NGOs, has suggestions for the executive: "the removal of tax loopholes on air transport, including kerosene which is not taxed, a weight penalty on vehicles including large electric cars, measures for renovation among the most precarious" as well as "a moratorium on industrial farms and aid for more sustainable farms".

“We will really have to dialogue with civil society actors on the measures to be taken and that they be accompanied by devices” to help the most precarious people, warns Anne Bringault, under penalty of having to back down in the face of anger. social.

"Discourse on Method"

"It's more of a discourse on the method, but without new announcements", summarizes Benoît Leguet, director general of the Institute of Economics for the Climate (I4CE), who also points out "two blind spots": financing and taking into account, costly, adaptation to climate change.

"The government has understood that new public policies are going to be needed", welcomes this member of the High Council for the Climate to AFP. "There is about half of the decline that comes from policies yet to be defined," he assesses.

"There may not be a + regulatory break + in France", he quips, ten days after President Emmanuel Macron pleaded for such a normative "break" at European level.

"I remain a little unsatisfied on the long-term public financing strategy" and on the costing of the 2024 finance bill, deplores the expert.

“Extremely ambitious schedule”

“It is positive that there is this excitement to speed things up and quantify the additional efforts in each sector”, notes Andreas Rüdinger, of the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (Iddri).

But for this energy transition expert, joined by AFP, "the timetable is extremely ambitious when we are already late", that we must ensure consultation and succeed in delicate parliamentary stages.

"Everyone wants to make their plan, but then you have to implement", recalls Andreas Rüdinger. "The real question is not so much the trajectory as finding how to unlock priority files to reduce emissions," he said, referring in particular to "livestock and food" which embarrass the government.

Climate more than biodiversity

"Once again, we discussed more about the climate than about biodiversity", regrets the League for the Protection of Birds. But the LPO welcomes the "willingness to consult the government", according to its director general Matthieu Orphelin, present during the presentation of the plan by the Prime Minister.

"We have not been completely reassured on specific points" he declared to AFP, such as the safeguarding of the Zero artificialisation of soils (ZAN), threatened with "unraveling" in the Senate, "the taking into account of biodiversity" in the deployment of renewables or the "ambitions of France on the European texts under negotiation on the restoration of nature" and "pesticides".