French president François Holland's government recently announced its budget for 2014 with more cuts in public spending; the agency taking the biggest hit turned out to be the Ministry of the Environment with a seven percent reduction in funds. Who knows what was going on behind the scenes, but this turned out to be too much for the Minister, Delphine Batho. She publicly criticized her own government, calling it a "bad" budget. On Tuesday she was sacked.
The budget cuts together with Ms. Batho's firing, even allowing for her failure of collective responsibility, says nothing good about the Holland government's interest in the environment. And this is not the first time Holland and Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault have axed a head of the department that seemed to taking a commitment to the environment too seriously. Holland's first Minister of the Environment, preceding Ms. Batho, was Nicole Bricq. But shortly after being named to the position, she suspended oil exploration permits in the waters around Guyane. The oil companies complained and Ms. Bricq was gone.
Ms. Batho has been replaced by Philippe Martin, a PS deputy from the Gers and until now a member of the Assembly's commission on sustainable development.
Apparently Ms. Batho wasn't particularly close to the EELV members of the government or environmentalist members of her own Socialist Party. But after the government's severe downgrading of environmental policy as indicated by the budget -- quite apart from Ms Batho's firing -- one wonders at what point the EELV members of the government will decide their project may be better served by leaving.
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