Suspended fine required against two environmental activists in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence

The two women appeared on Tuesday before the Digne judicial court, during a hearing which lasted approximately 5:30 hours, we learned on Wednesday from judicial sources and from their lawyers.

They were arrested at the beginning of October, lying across a path leading to the construction site of the Canadian company Boralex in Cruis, on the Lure mountain, in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, the local press then reported.

The defendants, members of the citizen collective "Elzeard Lutte en resistance" which says they "can no longer support the cutting down of forests at all costs, without any respect for nature", were indicted for "obstructing traffic vehicles on a public road and unauthorized entry into another person’s property.”

The suspended fine was required for the offense of obstruction, the ticket for trespassing on private property.

Environmental defenders denounce a construction site which has already led to the felling of hundreds of trees at the gates of the Luberon Regional Natural Park, near Cruis.

Boralex, which won the call for tenders in 2009 for the photovoltaic power plant, is defending a project which will "revalorize infertile municipal plots" since a fire in 2004. The company aims to install 20.000 panels on 17 hectares in 2024.

For her, the opponents are targeting the wrong target by attacking a renewable energy producer.

The prosecution considered that the two women had “used the wrong means”, freedom of expression and demonstration must remain within the framework of the law.

The case was taken under advisement on January 25.

The government wants the total share of renewable energies in French electricity production to increase from 26% to 34% by 2030, with the Ministry of Ecological Transition recommending the installation of ground-mounted solar power plants on "already degraded or artificialized sites ".