A69 Toulouse-Castres motorway: what does the validation law provide for restarting the contested project?

Their approach, supported identically in the National Assembly by the Tarn deputies Jean Terlier (Renaissance) and Philippe Bonnecarrère (non-attached), aims to allow parliamentarians to "take back control", after the Toulouse administrative court cancelled the authorisation to build this 53 km section of motorway, leading to the suspension of the work started in 2023. Concretely, it is a question of having the law recognise that this work meets an imperative reason of major public interest (RIIPM), necessary to justify in the eyes of justice the damage caused to the environment by such a work.

The text of the law is therefore only a few lines long... But it promises very lively debates, both on the substance and the form, with serious questions about its conformity to the Constitution, denounced by the opponents of the project who see it as an attempt to force through, or even to "circumvent" the separation of powers. "This law is an act of responsibility, coherence and territorial justice", argue the authors of the text, who advocate a "return to common sense" on a project whose definitive abandonment "would cause the public bill to explode to more than a billion euros, between compensation and restoration".

These elected officials, who also advocate the necessary "opening up" of a basin of around 100,000 people (Castres-Mazamet), can boast very broad support: around a hundred senators have co-signed the text, the government views it favorably and the deputies have already planned to include it on the agenda of the National Assembly on June 2, during a space reserved for the Together for the Republic (EPR) group.

They can therefore legitimately consider final adoption as early as this date, as the balance of power seems favorable to them. Indeed, only a portion of the left—La France Insoumise and Les Écologistes in particular—oppose the text in Parliament. These groups are in the minority, but their numbers are sufficient to refer the matter to the Constitutional Council with a view to obtaining the text's censure. "The Council will obviously be notified," confirmed Green Senator Ronan Dantec, who will submit a "motion of inadmissibility" to the Senate, doomed to failure in an Upper House that clearly leans to the right.

"This is a posturing law that would set a very serious precedent. Every time a project is suspended or canceled, could a validation law be submitted? This is total nonsense," continues the Loire-Atlantique representative. The bill's defenders, on the other hand, believe that their approach does not "call into question constitutional principles": it simply responds "to an emergency situation that serves to avoid the dramatic consequences of stopping the project," insists Horizons Senator Franck Dhersin, rapporteur of the bill.

Many elected officials are closely monitoring the future of this highway, whose construction was scheduled to be completed by the end of 2025. According to them, it will affect numerous infrastructure projects. This is why several Socialist elected officials from Occitanie are expected to vote for the bill, contrary to the majority position of the group, which prefers not to participate in the vote.