Paris deletes airport plan after 55 years

nantes - The French government has drawn a line through controversial plans to build a new airport near the village of Notre-Dame-des-Landes in the west of France. According to Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, there was no support for the approximately 580 million euro project.

The plans for the arrival of a new airport near Nantes are decades old, but never implemented. President Emmanuel Macron earlier promised to quickly pull up the stalled discussion. His government finally decided to close the political headache file. 'The Notre-Dame-des-Landes project is being discontinued,' the prime minister said on television.

Hundreds of environmental activists and anarchists camp at the place where the project should have been carried out. Also people living in the area refused to move according to French media. Proponents argued that the arrival of the airport would be good for the economic development of the area.

Residents of the area were allowed to express themselves in 2016 about the plans that stemmed from the sixties. In a referendum they then gave the green light for the arrival of the new airport. It had to replace an already existing airport at Nantes and in the first instance had to be able to process more than four million passengers per year.

The government is now opting for a different solution. Prime Minister Philippe said the existing airport would be modernized.