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center of Paris has led to a complete reconsideration of the
project originally planned.
The public debate for infrastructure projects has in fact
three different functions. Firstly, it enables a debate about
the various general concerns that are associated with
the project, such as its economic benefits and its harm
to the environment or biodiversity. Secondly, it enlightens
representative democracy on the meaning of the decision
that must be taken, by presenting all the arguments
and suggestions expressed during the debate. Finally, it
contributes fully to the design and development of the
project (whose ideal is the co-production of a number of its
elements).
Since the adoption of these laws, more than seventy public
debates have been held. Without doubt, public debate has
now become a kind of routine, and has served its purpose.
Fifteen years after its initiation, we can say that it is a
success 6 . Public debate, rooted in the large public protests
that took place in the early 1990s, is indeed a good tool
to help representative democracy to make decisions: it
makes it possible for people to express their arguments and
provides the CNDP with a snapshot of the public opinion
on a particular topic to inform the decision maker.
Yet, is it possible today to apply the same procedure
that has been proven successful for implementing new
infrastructures to new technologies and their regulatory
framework? The answer, as we shall see below, seems
unfortunately to be negative.
2. Citizen-participation procedures that have not
succeeded in establishing regulatory frameworks for
new technologies
2.1. Public debates meet some difficulties when used
for the development of new technologies
It is tempting to apply to debates on new technologies the
same organization as the one that is used in public debates
for infrastructure. In fact, this procedure was already used
twice: first for a debate in 2009 about nanotechnologies,
and more recently, at the end of 2013, for a debate on
radioactive waste (more precisely on the plans for a deep
disposal center for French radioactive waste). However,
both of those debates unfortunately suffered from the
radicalization of the protest, leading opponents to prevent
the debate from being held. Some people would say that
these events have been the result of actions carried
out by a minority of the population (in the case of both
nanotechnologies and nuclear power, this opposition arose
prior to the debate) and that the organization of this public
debate has offered them an opportunity to make their
radical opposition (to the project and to the associated
technology) heard at a national level. Still, that opposition
remains real and prevents the public meetings from being
held.
This threat may be also viewed as a result of a movement
of distrust of institutions and their public decisions.
The debate on nanotechnologies 7
In France, the public authorities, following a national
stakeholder debate about environmental issues organized
by the Ministry of Environment and known as the Grenelle
de l’environnement (2007-2008), asked the National
Commission for Public Debate to organize a consultation
on how to promote responsible development of
nanotechnologies. This debate was held from October 2009
to February 2010 8 and highlighted several items, although
it was disrupted by radical opposition from some groups.
First, public knowledge about nanotechnologies and their
related societal challenges was very weak. Moreover, the
vast majority of stakeholders expressed the need for more
transparent and more open governance.
Public debate was a first step, which needed a response
to be useful and called for sticking to a nanotechnology
development policy that included consultation with
various components of civil society in its operating
mode. The many challenges raised by nanotechnologies
— competitiveness, risk management, ethical issues and
social acceptability — called for an innovative form of
governance, in which governments and components of
society interact dynamically to collectively determine the
desired trajectory of development for nanotechnologies.
This approach presupposes that some popular wisdom
can be set aside, like the belief (largely shared by public
decision makers) that information and scientific training
are enough to ensure the support of the general public for
technological developments. Actually, studies tend to show
that laymen’s opinions are based less on understanding
and being informed of the special characteristics of
nanotechnologies, than on the prejudices they have about
technologies and the institutions that manage these.
Here we can see the full importance of transparency
in consultation and decision-making procedures for
obtaining informed trust from citizens: transparency on
how decisions are made (i.e. governance), R&D funding,
ethics, the end objectives of development, risk management,
and so on. Citizen involvement at a very early stage,
based on procedures that must still be developed to a
large extent, would allow nanotechnologies to develop in
accordance with societal expectations. In this spirit, the
European Commission launched on 13 May 2014 a “public
consultation on transparency measures for nanomaterials
on the market”. If, in the short term, regulation can be
regarded as a barrier to developing markets, there is no
doubt that in the longer term it will be the main factor of
companies’ competitiveness in nanotechnologies by creating
a more stable and secure environment for investment and
consumption.
The debate on radioactive waste
The public debate on radioactive waste (more precisely on
the plans for a deep disposal center for French radioactive
waste, at Bure in eastern France) was held from 15 May to
15 December 2013. The fourteen public meetings that were
initially planned have been all cancelled: the first two public
meetings, in May and June, were prevented by opponents of
the projects. The National Public Debate Commission then
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