The adventure of the “first area to be defended in Île-de-France” therefore lasted seventeen days. This Tuesday, in the early morning, a major police device put an end to the occupation of a wasteland near the agricultural lands of the Triangle de Gonesse, in Val-d’Oise. A smooth evacuation, or almost. “I took a few shields, there was also tear gas, but it was quite calm”, tells an activist who spent the night there. He was able to escape arrest, unlike the 25 people arrested and taken by bus to the Cergy-Pontoise police station. Bernard Loup, the spokesperson for the Collectif pour le Triangle de Gonesse (CPTG), which has been campaigning for years for the preservation of these hundreds of hectares of fields 15 kilometers from Paris, helplessly witnessed the evacuation. “I don’t know what the next step will be. But the fight will continue, as long as this station project in the middle of the fields will not be buried ”, he asserts.
Despite the abandonment in November 2019 of the EuropaCity shopping and leisure center mega-complex, the creation of a Grand Paris Express metro station on the route of line 17 is still relevant. Its construction would result in the concreting of the surrounding agricultural land, the first dwellings being more than 1.7 km away. Fearing the start of the work, environmental activists had decided to occupy land belonging to the public land establishment of Île-de-France. The Pontoise court had ordered their evacuation on Friday, February 19.
“This political question does not have to be dealt with at the police station”
“We remind the government that an alternative project exists: that of the Carma association. An agricultural ecological transition project that makes it possible to protect these land fertile soil and initiate the relocation of food production ”, Bernard Loup snorts. After multiple legal appeals, demonstrations, a ZAD that he welcomed without being at the origin of it, he and his CPTG comrades know that the outcome can only come from the executive. The left-wing opposition was not mistaken, as evidenced by the wave of support following the expulsion.
Éric Piolle, the ecological mayor of Grenoble, expressed it on the spot. Invited by the CPTG on Tuesday morning on the scene, he could only attend their evacuation. “The stake is national. This station project in the middle of the fields is meaningless and symbolizes an outdated development model. Faced with this, an alternative exists for a food not imported, not industrial. This fight makes sense ”, explains the city councilor. The day before, the ZAD had received a visit from the Communists, including the regional councilor Didier Mignot and Senator Fabien Gay. The latter, reached by phone, “Shares the CPTG’s fight against EuropaCity for years”, he recalls. “This station will be useless. We are for line 17, but with another route. This area must be opened up with a project that really meets the needs of local populations. “ The senator calls for a peaceful and democratic debate on the future of agricultural land in the Triangle de Gonesse. “Instead, we send the police”, he regrets. During the day, some sympathizers went to the Cergy-Pontoise police station to show their solidarity with those in custody. Among others Clémentine Autain (rebellious France), who took the opportunity to install, a few months before the regional elections, her duel with the current president of Île-de-France, Valérie Pécresse (Libres!): “(She) went to court instead of taking on the necessary democratic debate on the Triangle de Gonesse. It is a political question that does not have to be dealt with at the police station. I call for a public debate. ” The CPTG calls for a new rally this Friday February 26 in front of the prefecture of Val-d’Oise. Another demonstration could be held the next day at the Trocadéro.
