A69 motorway: battle of arguments before the Toulouse administrative court
Will work on the A69 resume soon? The Toulouse Administrative Court of Appeal examined for nearly four and a half hours on Wednesday, May 21, the State's request for a "stay of execution" aimed at suspending the effects of the Toulouse Administrative Court's judgment that halted construction of the motorway on February 27. Its decision will be rendered "by May 28."
On Wednesday morning, in a packed room where around sixty people were seated according to La Dépêche , Frédéric Diard, public rapporteur, that is to say the magistrate whose role is to inform the court, confirmed that he was in favour of resuming this work, believing, as he had underlined on Monday in a communication to the various parties , that the conditions "seem to be met in light of the texts and the case law" .
According to the Code of Administrative Justice, the conditions for a stay of execution are the existence of "serious arguments" against the decision rendered at first instance, as well as the presence of "difficult to repair consequences" which could be caused by the decision.
On the first point, without entering into the debate on the possible delay in the development of the Castres-Mazamet basin which, according to the promoters of the motorway, would legitimise its construction, the rapporteur considered that motorway projects were in any case "not reserved for disaster-stricken towns" .
Costs incurred by stopping workAccording to him, the importance of the towns of Castres, Mazamet and Toulouse justifies "by nature that they be linked by fast road infrastructures" , as are other important Occitan towns, such as Albi, Foix, Carcassonne or Cahors, all linked to Toulouse by the motorway, he stressed.
The costs incurred by stopping work, although "probably overestimated" by the project manager and future concession holder Atosca, are "particularly high" and therefore also justify the resumption of work, he added.
For the State, Eric Sacher, Deputy Director of Legal Affairs at the Ministry of Ecological Transition, considered at the bar that the administrative court's decision to stop the construction site constituted "an anomaly" that should be corrected.
This decision "misunderstands the criteria required and retained" to deny the existence of a "compelling reason of major public interest" (RIIPM) justifying the project, stated in support Catherine Schlegel, the lawyer for several local authorities concerned (Tarn department, communities of communes of Castres-Mazamet and Sor-Agout), believing that the figures put forward by the court "could have biased the analysis" .
"Irreversible consequences for the environment"On the side of the opponents of the project, lawyer Alice Terrasse spoke out against the position of the public rapporteur, insisting that "there is no project which 'by nature' would have an imperative reason of major public interest" (RIIPM), necessary to authorize this type of construction site.
This RIIPM must be assessed according to specific criteria (security, economic and social interest, etc.), she argued. "The urgent thing is to let the lower court do its job," she insisted, while the court must rule in a few months on the appeal on the merits against the judgment of February 27, deploring that the supporters of the motorway favor territorial equity which does not constitute an RIIPM, "to the detriment of the environment."
The lawyer also stressed that the proposed validation law, presented by pro-A69 parliamentarians and voted on last week by the Senate, constituted "a contempt for justice and for the litigant." "The State does not believe her arguments so much that it is obliged to make a law," Alice Terrasse lamented.
For her colleague, Julie Rover, it is the "irreversible consequences for the environment" that must be taken into account in the court's decision and not the unproven risks to the "financial health" of the companies involved in the construction of the motorway.
The World with AFP
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