From one ecology to another. The Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, very severely reprimanded the Paris town hall’s plan to lower the speed by 20 km/h on the ring road after the Olympic and Paralympic Games (JOP) next summer . “Putting the speed at 50 km/h, if it’s to generate more traffic, it’s surreal because it generates more CO2 emissions,” she thundered on CNews. And to decide: “it’s really ecology on a small scale”.
The Minister of Energy Transition criticized the Parisian municipality for making unilateral decisions which will harm well beyond their citizens. “You don’t take a measure when you are mayor of Paris without taking into account all the users of the ring road who are, as luck would have it, people who do not have the same means as Parisians, not the same public transport” , developed Agnès Pannier-Runacher, for whom this measure is both “antisocial” and “illegitimate”.
Contrary to this provision of the 2024-2030 Climate plan, presented a few days ago by Anne Hidalgo, the Minister of Energy believes that “the challenge for Paris is to get around well”, thanks in particular to public transport. common. Agnès Pannier-Runacher therefore joins her Transport colleague, Clément Beaune, who announced Thursday that the State will not validate this Paris town hall project. More soberly, the Minister of Transport, elected deputy for Paris in 2022, declared: “I think it is not a good idea in the short term.”
The government’s frontal opposition has inaugurated a legal battle between the two parties. Clément Beaune’s entourage, in support of several decrees, ensures that an invalidation of the State will prevent the town hall from going through with its project. “On several subjects necessary for the measure, the opinion of the State is binding”, we affirm at the ministry, where we assimilate the Climate plan of the town hall, which also intends to reserve one of the three routes from the ring road to carpooling at the same time, to “science fiction”.
Also readParisian ring road at 50 km/h: “Let’s abandon glitter ecology in Paris!”
But Anne Hidalgo’s entourage does not give up. “I confirm to you that we will lower the speed,” declared first deputy Emmanuel Gérgoire during a press conference on Thursday. According to him, a mayor “can, within the framework of his police powers, reduce speed on the grounds of safety or the environment”. “Our analysis is that we can lower the speed for environmental issues as we wish,” the deputy mayor Anne Hidalgo told AFP, saying it was based on an “interpretation of the law » from the Minister of the Interior in a writing dating back to 2019.
The municipal elections of 2026 are taking shape in the backdrop of this fight on the Paris ring road. The two personalities on the front line, Clément Beaune and Emmanuel Grégoire, are considered as two putative candidates from the presidential camp for the first and from the camp of Anne Hidalgo for the second.