Clément Viktorovitch returns every week to the debates and political issues. Sunday October 8: ecological standards adopted in recent years. ZFE, ZAN, DPE, ambitious measures contested, even unraveled, before their entry into force.
The question was asked head-on by Laurent Wauquiez, the LR president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, during the congress of rural mayors of France last weekend. He set himself up as a slayer of the ZAN system, Zero net artificialization, the standard which requires municipalities to gradually stop the concreting of soils. A device “ruralicide” according to Laurent Wauquiez, which would jeopardize the future of the territories, to the point of announcing that it would not be applied in his region.
This announcement of withdrawal has a priori no chance of succeeding. The ZAN objective is enshrined in the Climate and Resilience law: it is a standard that applies to everyone, and any rebellious communities would quickly find themselves overtaken by the administrative courts. It is all the more surprising since this law was voted for by most of the LR group in the Assembly, and especially by the Senate, predominantly on the right, and traditionally very attached to the protection of rural areas. We therefore have here a law whose ecological ambition was a consensus, but whose implementation in practice, certainly restrictive, is today contested by some local elected officials – Laurent Wauquiez in the lead.
A political strategy
Laurent Wauquiez undoubtedly seeks to give himself the image of the protector of rurality in the fight against Parisian centralism. The problem is that it doesn’t stop there. Within the government itself, ten days ago, it was Bruno Le Maire who pleaded to reverse the ban on renting accommodation whose energy performance is classified G – the famous thermal strainers, which should no longer be able to be rented from 2025. The Minister of the Economy had to backtrack, but his exit was nonetheless very noticed.
And it’s not over: this summer, the ZFEs, the Low Emission Zones, which were to gradually ban the circulation of the most polluting cars in large metropolises, were considerably relaxed. Each time, the observation is the same: ecological discourses achieve consensus, until they have to be implemented.
We must also recognize that these decisions are not easy, on a daily basis, for some French people. The obligation to change your boiler, or even to insulate your home before being able to rent it again, will actually represent a very heavy investment for some owners. As for Low Emission Zones, it is even worse: they risk depriving certain low-income households of their ability to travel, to the point that they have been described as real social bombs.
And yet, the objectives remain no less compelling. We absolutely must reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, 20% of which come from the residential sector (figure from the General Commission for Sustainable Development). We must fight against pollution, which kills more than 40,000 people each year in France (figures from Public Health France). And we absolutely must preserve biodiversity and agricultural land against soil concreting, which has increased by 24,000 hectares over the previous decade (official figures).
Who will be the losers of the ecological transition?
There is only one solution: it is to assume that, in the immediate future, ecological standards will necessarily create losers. We still need to know which ones. Either we allow these standards to apply in all their brutality, and it is the most modest French people, those who cannot afford the adaptation costs, who will be hit hard. Either we take, at the same time, real measures of social justice: we will seek part of the resources from our most advantaged fellow citizens, to cushion the shock for others. For example by reintroducing a form of wealth tax. This is also what the report written by economist Jean Pisani-Ferry recommends at the request of the Prime Minister.
But this would require calling into question one of the economic dogmas followed by the government for six years: lower taxes, at all costs, and for all French people. The other possibility, of course, is not to choose: to postpone difficult decisions until later, by postponing or relaxing restrictive standards. Electorally, it is undoubtedly more comfortable. But let’s make no mistake, this option will also have its share of losers: in this case, future generations.