This is not (yet) a halt to the project, but it is likely to seriously weaken it. The European Union announced on Wednesday that it will not fund the Grand Sud-Ouest Rail Project (GPSO). It’s a windfall of 2.8 billion euros, for the whole project which provides for a high-speed line between Bordeaux and Toulouse and another between Bordeaux and Dax, which evaporates…
GPSO is not one of the 135 infrastructure projects to be financed by the European Union under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF). In a press release issued by the town hall of Bordeaux on Thursday, the president of the Transport Committee in the European Parliament, the ecologist Karima Delli, believes that “we have not retained the project for a new high-speed line GPSO” because it “seemed to us that alternatives, based on the existing lines, would make it possible to greatly reduce the environmental footprint of the project and would be more useful for the daily mobility of the inhabitants”.
“Useless big project”, according to Hurmic
It was enough for the mayor of Bordeaux, Pierre Hurmic, to demand the abandonment of the project. The ecologist, one of the staunchest critics of the GPSO, has been warning for months about an incomplete financing plan to complete this project. “The State must now take note that this large, useless and destructive project of biodiversity must be stopped,” said Pierre Hurmic. Another ecologist, the new deputy for the 2nd constituency of the Gironde, Nicolas Thierry, is also asking for the project to be stopped in the face of funding that is becoming “untenable. »
The Gironde departmental council, chaired by the socialist Jean-Luc Gleyze, an elected representative from southern Gironde where opposition to the project is strong, believes that “the European Commission has just caused an unprecedented exit from the rails for these projects”. And to add that it “above all evokes the relevance thus recognized to work rather on the development of existing lines, less impacting on the environmental level and more useful for the daily movements of the inhabitants. »
Commissioning expected for 2032
The cost of the LGV project is estimated at 14.3 billion euros, with funding planned at 40% by the State, 40% by local authorities in Occitania and New Aquitaine and 20% by the Union. European. The European subsidy therefore represented an amount of 2.8 billion euros for the two lines, including two billion euros just for the Bordeaux-Toulouse branch, the most expensive of the GPSO.
Work on the branch between Bordeaux and Toulouse, which provides for the creation of 222 km of new line and work for the railway facilities south of Bordeaux and north of Toulouse, must be given in early 2024, for the commissioning of the first trains expected in 2032. The ambition is to reduce the train journey time between Toulouse and Paris from the current 4h10 to 3h10 with the LGV.
It remains to be seen whether this financial hole will actually be such as to call into question a project that seemed to be off to a good start, knowing that a new call for projects from the European Commission is to be launched next September.
“The GPSO project continues”
And this is where GPSO officials hope to get back into the ranks of European funding. “The result of the 2021 call for projects in no way prejudges the follow-up that will be reserved by the Commission for future European grant applications for the Greater South West rail project, which includes the rail facilities south of Bordeaux. On the interest shown in the GPSO project, Professor Carlo Secchi, coordinator for the European Union of the Atlantic corridor declared on June 29 in Lyon during the European days of “Connecting Europe” that the GPSO project was considered particularly essential”, indicates Etienne Guyot, the prefect of Haute-Garonne, coordinator of the Grand Projet Sud-Ouest.
In a press release, the State services specify that “the GPSO project is continuing and will take a major step this Monday, July 4 with the installation meeting of the GPSO company, which will be followed by the meeting of the steering committee. The State remains fully mobilized alongside the signatory communities of the financing plan in order to bring this major project to fruition for daily mobility and regional development”.
Even if for Pierre Hurmic, “it is time to prepare, with all the communities, partners and territories, an application for the alternative to the GPSO: the modernization of the existing lines. »