“I am not convinced that such an objective would make sense at the European level”: these are the words that the Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, retorted, during the Council of Ministers of the Environment of December in Brussels, the idea of an extension to the 27 Member States of the now famous concept of “zero net artificialization”. Would France therefore give up on shaping Europe in its image, even though in 2021, during the adoption of the Climate and Resilience law which introduced this concept into French law, Barbara Pompili, the Minister of At the time, proudly announced that “with this law another world is dawning”? The situation is serious. Have we changed our French DNA? How can we explain such a reservation, rare enough to be noted, when the European Commission is nevertheless ready to legislate on soil monitoring and resilience?
The answer is simple: reaching a common definition of this concept in Brussels is impossible. The European organization Eurostat is content to define as artificialized built-up soils and coated and stabilized soils, while France has a particularly extensive approach, including all soils which are not natural, agricultural or forest areas, which they are waterproofed – built, coated and stabilized like roads, railways, car parks, etc. – or permeable – like parks and gardens, urban wastelands, sports fields, quarries, etc. This definition is so broad and vague that At the end of the vote on the law, no one was able to clearly say where it stopped, leaving it to the decree to clarify things.
In addition to this semantic problem, there is a measurement problem: the methodology hitherto used in France, very incomplete, leads, here again, to a broad vision of the concept compared to the European method: in the first case, it is the equivalent of a department which is artificialized every ten years; in the second, every twenty-five years… In other words, it is on a vague notion, which borrows more from bureaucratic science than from science itself, that the policy of territorial and urban planning is now based or again the price of land, one of the major determinants of housing prices. To complete the picture, let us add that, in the directive being prepared in Brussels, there are no plans to set mandatory objectives in this area. Conversely, France makes it a binding objective.
DPE is a weapon of destruction
The same observation applies to the energy performance of housing: there is no need to return to the inadequacies of the energy performance diagnosis (DPE), masterfully highlighted by the Economic Analysis Council – a body placed, let us remember, under the Prime minister… Here again, structuring public policies and spending are based on tools and a methodology that owe more to Kafka than to Einstein. It is even legitimate to question the constitutionality of such a tool, in particular its compatibility with the fundamental principle of respect for private property.
The DPE is a weapon of massive destruction of real estate value without being a weapon of massive reduction of greenhouse gases. And, again, no other country has adopted such a radical and restrictive approach.
Thanks to its historic nuclear program, France has been a pioneer in the decarbonization of its electricity system. Because of poorly conceived and poorly implemented ideological and bureaucratic laws, it is an exception, and will remain so. “Zero net artificialization” like the energy performance diagnosis as it is designed today are to ecology what the 35-hour week was to labor law: a very French exception, which no one has rushed to to copy, which strains and slows down our country rather than making it productive and creative. Everyone must find their way in the transition? Perhaps, but on condition of relying on a universal language, that of science, rather than on a bureaucratic sabir disconnected from reality.
Cécile Maisonneuve is founder of Decysive and advisor to the Ifri Energy and Climate Center
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