The Prime Minister and her Minister of Education have chosen to go near Rennes by plane, for the start of the school year this Monday, September 4. A decision that makes people talk.
38 minutes of flight between Paris and Rennes: the movement of Elizabeth Borne and Gabriel Attal is controversial this Monday, September 4. On the occasion of the start of the school year, the Prime Minister and her Minister of Education traveled to Ille-et-Vilaine to visit a school and a high school. The objective of their visit was to present the government’s new measures in terms of education and the organization of school life. But their choice of means of transport, not very respectful of the environment, will have made people talk all the more.
On social networks, Internet users and elected officials expressed their anger. “For their return to school in Liffré, Gabriel Attal and Élisabeth Borne preferred the 38-minute flight in a presidential plane to the 1h30 TGV to Rennes,” strongly criticized François Ruffin, the rebellious deputy for the Somme on Twitter. The number one environmentalist MP, Cyrielle Chatelain, denounced “hypocrisy” on the part of the government which should not prioritize planes over trains “when we have really become aware of the climate catastrophe”.
The entourage of Elisabeth Borne gave some elements of justification to France Info: The Prime Minister “always favors the lowest emissions transport for her trips, but there she had an imperative in Paris in the middle of the afternoon, going back and forth with another means would have been more complicated. We always favor the least carbon-intensive means possible! Car or train when we can ensure safety. From time to time, we make exceptions,” said one collaborator of the head of government.
