It’s good for him. The Minister of Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu “confirms and assumes responsibility” for his business jet flights, he declared on Franceinfo on Wednesday evening, after being singled out by the local Angevin newspaper La Topette. “All these trips are work-related and if tomorrow, in the same circumstances, I have to take planes again in this context, I will do so,” justified the minister.
When “there is no commercial line or in the event that there is a catastrophe or an event, I use training planes from the DGAC (General Directorate of Civil Aviation)”, affirmed Christophe Béchu , who mentioned several cases of “emergencies” such as “fires in the Pyrenees” or even “floods in the Vésubie” which justified this mode of transport.
“I had no other options,” says the minister
In its investigation published on November 30, the Angevin newspaper counted six trips between July 31 and November 14, for a total of “more than 12,000 km” and “23 tons of CO2”, according to calculations by La Topette. “Since I became minister, I have made between 100 and 130 trips,” said the former mayor of Angers, who claimed to apply “the rules of the citizens’ convention”, namely taking the train when there is This is a journey of less than three hours, the plane takes more than four hours.
The Minister of Ecological Transition admitted, however, that he had taken the plane between Metz and Paris, two cities separated by less than an hour and a half by TGV. “I had no other option to go to Metz than to use the plane since I was leaving from Pas-de-Calais, and as the plane then returned, instead of it returning empty, it ‘brought back’ instead of taking ‘a train’, he explained. “There was no better option” during each of these flights, “I can confirm this to you completely calmly”, repeated Christophe Béchu.