Fillon’s environmental programme under fire

Nicolas Hulot, a prominent French environmental activist, has criticised François Fillon’s programme, in which the Republican Party presidential nominee pledges to maintain France’s dependence on nuclear energy and to scrap the precautionary principle in assessing new technologies.

Speaking on the RTL radio station on 29 November, Hulot said that it was a shame that Fillon, “a man who keeps the Catholic movement close, wasn’t more inspired by the Pope’s first Encyclical” when drafting environment policy. In the Encyclical, published in June 2015, Pope Francis had supported efforts to conserve the environment.

Hulot then criticised Fillon’s promise to amend the law for energy change and green growth. The law, passed in July 2015, aims to cut France’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent from their 1990 levels by 2030, and by 75 per cent by 2050.