At the Mayors' Congress, artificialization of soils animates the debates

Highlighted by the deadly floods in Valencia, Spain, as a key factor in the aggravation of risks, the ravages of land artificialization are no longer really a matter of debate among mayors.

The Minister for Partnership with Territories, Catherine Vautrin, had come to remind them of this. "From 2009 to 2022, we have consumed 24.000 hectares of natural, agricultural and forest areas each year in France. (...) In twenty years, artificialisation of soils has increased four times more than our population," she stressed in the opening plenary session.

Since its creation by the 2021 Climate Law, the objective of "zero net artificialization" (ZAN) of soils has been the acronym most hated by mayors.

It aims to halt urban sprawl by 2050, with the intermediate objective of halving the rate of artificialisation by 2031 compared to the period 2011-2021.

Although the law of July 20, 2023, initiated by the Senate, introduced several easing measures, elected officials remain confused on the ground by the complexity of certain implementing decrees.

"There are two dominant feelings: the lack of transparency with a law that is implemented above the mayors", notably through the regions, and "a deep feeling of inequality between the territories", testified Jean-François Vigier, UDI mayor of Bures-sur-Yvette (Essonne).

In line with the "pragmatic and differentiated" development on the ZAN promoted by Prime Minister Michel Barnier in his general policy speech, senators tabled a bill at the beginning of November aimed at "giving communities some breathing space".

"We launched this work because (...) this top-down logic from the State to the territories did not take into account their aspirations (...) and we were losing sight of the objective," explained Senator Guislain Cambier (Union centriste).

"Vicious" mechanism

"We say to ourselves that it won't be very serious if we deviate a little, as long as it is justified (...). On a subject like this, we must move away from ideological positions (...) by saying that there are simply major national objectives that we must respect," added LR senator Jean-Baptiste Blanc.

Among the elements criticized, the absence of economic incentive to move towards greater sobriety.

"It is clear that a commercial zone brings you Tascom (tax on commercial areas), it brings you (...) employment, how can you say no?", asked Constance de Pélichy, new Liot MP for Loiret.

"We are touching on the sometimes very vicious mechanism of regional planning which has led a certain number of elected officials, in particular in order to be able to continue to develop their village (...) towards excessive urbanisation", she continues.

For Françoise Rossignol, PS mayor of Dainville (Pas-de-Calais), the difficulty of the law also lies in its "landing on the ground".

Elected officials thus find themselves on the front line to explain to a resident "why the land on which he paid inheritance tax will have virtually no value tomorrow because it will no longer be buildable", she observed.

Laurence Rouède, vice-president of the Aquitaine region, indicated for her part that the ZAN had come to "disrupt" the work of the regions on land sobriety initiated by the NOTRe law, by wanting to go "faster and stronger" but forgetting major subjects such as "reindustrialization, housing, the production of renewable energies", all policies that consume land.

"We need another law to achieve the same objectives, with a different timing but a different method," argued Jean-François Debat, PS mayor of Bourg-en-Bresse.

Catherine Vautrin outlined a series of responses, including the simplification of the method of counting hectares consumed, the separate counting of "major projects of national or European scope" (Pene), and the possibility of moving back the initial reference decade used to calculate hectares already consumed to a more contemporary, supposedly fairer, period.