the National Assembly considers a bill on prevention before a high-risk summer

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The text has already been adopted in first reading by the Senate. Initiated by the right and the center, it does not go far enough, according to the deputies on the left.

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A forest fire near the town of Saumos (Gironde), September 13, 2022. (PHILIPPE LOPEZ / AFP)

The deputies examine from Monday, May 15 a battery of measures to better prevent forest fires. Elected officials are preparing for a new high-risk summer after the gigantic fires that marked the spirits in 2022. The Pyrénées-Orientales were already the scene in mid-April of the first big fire of this year in the country, with flames that covered about 1,000 hectares.

The bill, initiated by LR and centrist senators and already unanimously adopted at first reading by the Senate, will be debated from 4 p.m. until Wednesday. It passed without difficulty the course of the examination in committee, in a consensual climate, in spite of reservations from the left. The text lays the foundations for a “national strategy”, involving all the players concerned and including agricultural areas. The elect also want “better regulate the interfaces between forests” and urban areas and raise public awareness.

The left wants a forest preservation plan

Among the measures planned, the Senate has reinforced the legal obligations of clearing for owners of land near forests, with increased penalties in the event of breaches, further increased by the deputies in committee. Faced with the many fires caused by cigarette butts, the text enshrines at the legislative level the prohibition of smoking in the woods or forests most exposed to the risk of fire, and up to 200 meters from these areas, during “risky times”. And the throwing of cigarette butts is explicitly included among the causes of involuntary fire punishable by law.

The deputies on the left support the text, but regret the insufficient measures in their eyes. “We must not be satisfied with a simple national strategic plan against the risk of fire, but develop a plan for the preservation of forests”, launched in committee the socialist deputy Stéphane Delautrette. The rapporteur Sophie Panonacle agrees, but this “will be the subject of another bill which will be Act II” of the one under discussion, she assured.


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