the town hall of Marseille wants to attack cruise ships

A “lawless zone“. These are the words used by the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan, to qualify the waters of Marseille. In a petition signed by more than 26,000 people, he asks the government to put in place strict standards to limit pollution at the city’s port. Among them, in particular, the prohibition for cruise ships to dock in Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône) during pollution peaks, or even an increase in boat controls.

“We have cruise ships arriving every day, we know that a cruise ship pollutes like a million cars […]. When we are on pollution alert, when we are in peak heat like never before, with heat wave alerts, we are in a situation where we have to regulate all that“, assures the mayor. The president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, Renaud Muselier, replied that he “should rather act“than start a petition, and has assured to tackle this problem himself.