MEPs voted late on Saturday to suspend some domestic airline flights that can be made by train in less than two and a half hours as part of a broader climate bill.
If the bill passes through France’s upper house, the Senate, France will join a number of European countries trying to move away from short-haul flights.
But some have criticized President Emmanuel Macron for watering down proposals from his own environmental panel that banning flights where a train journey would take less than four hours.
Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari said the government’s proposal was “reasonable”. He told lawmakers during the debate that a four-hour threshold “would have really affected areas in need of fleeing.”
“If there is a robust alternative, customers usually transfer to the train,” he said, citing routes from Strasbourg and Bordeaux to Paris. “Whenever high-speed lines compete with flights, we find that trains are largely empty (air passengers).”
Djebbari also said the bill would end flights from Orly airport to Nantes and Lyon.
But the measures do not apply to routes that are typically part of a connecting international flight; meaning that the capital’s Charles de Gaulle airport is largely spared the move, as it is France’s main international transport hub.
Left-wing MP Danièle Obono said the government’s plan to move away from a four-hour limit would “save the three routes that emit the most greenhouse gas: Paris-Nice, Paris-Toulouse, (and) Paris-Marseille.”
The four-hour proposal came from the Citizens’ Panel of the Climate Treaty, which was set up by Macron to measure the country’s temperature for emission-reducing measures.
A number of European countries have tried to promote rail travel as an alternative to domestic flights, even though the Covid-19 pandemic has put pressure on the aviation industry.
The government support package of € 600 million ($ 714 million) for Austrian Airlines stipulated that it would cut domestic flight emissions by 50% by 2050 and discontinued flights where a direct train alternative takes “significantly less than three hours”.