This Wednesday, in La Libre, Alain Maron (Ecolo), Brussels Minister for the Environment, accused Flanders of having derailed the solution to the overflight problem. “Inter-cabinet discussions resulted in a joint statement […] The Brussels, Walloon and federal governments have all endorsed this declaration provided that the Flemish government accepts it. But on May 18, the Flemish government decided to slam the door, when the negotiation had resulted in a text.
Benoît Cerexhe (Les Engagés), mayor of Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, a town very heavily overflown, reacted to the exit of the Brussels minister.
“The overview is THE file on which I would have liked the ecologists to put the environment ahead of the economy. When will the Ecolo ministers put the climate and health emergency on the Government’s table to reduce the nuisance at Brussels Airport?” he asks. “Isn’t this the right time to act in this direction? Today, there are measures on which there is a consensus among those who really suffer from overflights: the ban on night flights (10 p.m. to 7 a.m.), the ban on old cargo planes that exceed noise standards, the limitation to 220,000 the number of annual movements at Brussels Airport.”
Benoît Cerexhe adds, both to Alain Maron and Georges Gilkinet, that “a minister’s job is to carry out these measures, not to fear his colleagues and wait for justice to order him to ‘to act !”
Céline Frémault: The Prime Minister must take over the file himself”
Other elected officials reacted to the words of Alain Maron. Céline Fremault, head of the Engagés group in the Brussels Parliament, said she was “astonished and dismayed” on Twitter, and judged “unthinkable that Minister Maron would simply block his Flemish partner.” If a finding of inability to conclude an agreement is recorded, she appeals “to the Prime Minister to immediately take over this file and the pilot himself.”
The president of Défi, François De Smet, believes that “there is, unfortunately, no possible political outcome with the consent of Flanders today” and that there is no issue “only in enforcing court decisions and in taking responsibility for the federal government.”
Finally, Alexia Bertrand, head of the MR group in the Brussels Parliament, castigated Ecolo who “discovered the challenge of the Brussels overflight file: finding an agreement with Flanders…”
