Paper Title
Legitimizing Risky Industrial Activities: Regulation or
Abstract
This paper questions the implementation of the French Bachelot Act, which have created the major
“Technological Risks Prevention Plans” (TRPP) as they are applied to an industrial and port zone. It reveals how a
regulation aiming at protecting industrial activities and urban zones through their separation, can generate a strong tension
between economic interests. One reason of this tension comes from the very notion of economic acceptability, used by
Seveso companies in order to put limits to demands formulated by the environmental administration. Even if this notion is
considered by the Bachelot Act and previous regulations, paradoxically it has no formal definition. So it can be used by
companies without any possibility of a public control. Nevertheless, it quickly appears that what is considered as acceptable
by Seveso companies may be inacceptable by other companies. So the economic acceptability is a much more complicated
notion than supposed (and not defined) in industrial risks regulations. Actually, the Bachelot Act could force non Seveso big
and small companies to delocalize because it creates non-risks zones around Seveso plants. Thus local decision makers
engage themselves in a process of adapting and rearranging the rules of the Bachelot Act, asking the French government for
support. Finally, some kind of “side law” has been invented by State to find a solution to the tensions between economic
interests.
Index terms - Technological Risks, Economic Acceptability, Industrial Zones, Regulation