The Prime Minister must be in Paris “very quickly if there is the slightest problem”he justified on RTL after his round trip to Prades (Pyrénées-Orientales), to vote in the first round on Sunday.
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Prime Minister Jean Castex went to Prades (Pyrénées-Orientales) to fulfill his duty as a voter on Sunday during the first round of the presidential election. All in all, the chief executive stayed two hours in this town of 6,000 inhabitants, of which he was mayor from 2008 to 2020, before returning to Paris. Jean Castex’s Falcon landed in Perpignan at 8:30 a.m., according to Releasebefore taking off again towards the capital at 10.30 a.m.
On social networks, many critics have focused on the financial and environmental cost of such a plane trip. “I used the usual rules that apply to the Prime Minister”replied Jean Castex on RTL, Tuesday, April 12. “I hear I chartered a private jet, etc. I flew out of state, that’s ithe continued. The Prime Minister must be in Paris very quickly if there is the slightest problem. It’s a time of controversy.”
In February, the Mediapart site wrote that “The Falcons of transport squadron 00.060 (ET60) emit on average 1,500 times more CO2 than the TGV” and “the rental costs amount to around 5,000 euros (of public money) per hour of use”. The investigation site explained that Jean Castex had used private planes to go from Paris to several cities such as Nantes, Bordeaux, Lyon, Angoulême or Caen. The Prime Minister, however, had himself signed a circular to restrict the state’s use of air transport – only authorized when “travel time by rail is more than three hours”which is the case for Prades, located 860 kilometers from Paris.