Vaud: right and employers for Holcim jobs

“Any outing of concrete at the load of charge seems to me illusory and even dangerous …” Pascal Broulis opened the fires against the “Sauvons Le Mormont” initiative, in popular vote on September 28. The former Minister of Finance and Advisor to the Vaudois States PLR goes up to the front against this change in the cantonal constitution.

Launched in 2022 in particular under the impulse of the Greens, a year after the ZAD (area to be defended) of the Mormont hill, the initiative would end the exploitation of the career for the cement plant Holcim of elapens. If the text has not been removed, it is because “The Initiative Committee was in a certain way core by the extreme left, since it was still she who made the weight there, ”explains Nicolas Sueter, leader of the Grand Vaud council.

Mormont without exploitation?

“The Mormont site is declared a protected site. All exploitation of the soil is prohibited, with the exception of an agricultural and silvicultural activity that respects the environment and nature. ” These are the two sentences honored by the employers’, construction and real estate organizations, the PLR, the UDC and the Vert’liberals. Their committee has a budget of 200,000 francs, including 15,000 funded by Holcim.

On Thursday, at the Center de Training des Construction Trades, in Settings, their rallying cry is “short circuits”. Their campaign is also launched in favor of the counter-project. Defended by Minister Vert Vassilis Venizelos, he brings together all the parties, except the radical left. It would fix in the constitution that the State and the municipalities “create conditions favorable to the development of the circular economy”. It also protects the Mormont through the law: the exploitation perimeters would be frozen.

An opportunity for the circular economy

Pascal Broulis insists on the “150 direct jobs” threatened if Holcim must leave, and the “300 indirect jobs”. He compares the challenge to the fights for Novartis in Prangins, Votropack in Saint-Prex and the Cressier refinery (NE). For the UDC Yvan Pahud, national councilor, the initiative is “suicidal”, because it would cause the import of cement by “60,000 foreign trucks”, therefore more co₂while Switzerland has an annual need of 5 million tonnes of cement, the concrete binder. The initiative would also be contrary to “the circular economy which is underway”, assures the national vert’liberal councilor Céline Weber: “Concrete can be recycled almost endlessly, 85% of the concrete of demolition is thus recycled currently in Switzerland. We must not miss the opportunity to include the principle of the circular economy in the Constitution. ”

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