A69: a request to resume work examined by the courts this Wednesday

The Toulouse Administrative Court of Appeal is examining this Wednesday, May 21, a request from the State to resume work on the A69 motorway, which has been suspended since the end of February. This request has received the support of the reporting magistrate, much to the dismay of opponents.

At around 10 a.m., three magistrates will begin examining this request for a "stay of execution" submitted at the end of March by the Ministry of Transport, a procedural tool which, in administrative justice matters, can allow the effects of a judgment to be suspended pending the hearing on the merits of the appeal.

In the case of the A69, if the judges grant the request, this would mean a resumption of the motorway works stopped by a February 27 judgment of the Toulouse administrative court , which had annulled the environmental authorization granted by the local prefectures to begin the work.

In an opinion communicated to the various parties on Monday, the public rapporteur, a magistrate whose role is to inform the court seized of the matter and whose positions are generally followed, declared himself in favour of resuming the work .

According to one of the opponents' lawyers, he believes that the elements required to grant a stay of execution are present, namely "serious arguments" against the decision rendered at first instance, and the "difficult to repair consequences" that this decision risks causing.

La Voie est Libre, the main group opposing the motorway, said it was "extremely surprised" by the rapporteur's position. "We cannot believe that emergency procedures [...] can sweep aside such a clear-cut and meticulously argued substantive decision," said the environmental group, whose members said they remained "confident in the decision of the judges to stay the sentence." "Given the quality of the first instance judgment, (they) will not allow the temporary restart of the A69 fiasco," they hope, believing that a resumption of work before the substantive appeal hearing expected in a few months would be "pure madness."

For his part, Jean Terlier, Macronist MP for Tarn and fervent defender of the motorway, judged on LCP that the rapporteur's opinion was "very good news" going "in the right direction" , while awaiting the decision of the court judges. This is expected within a few days.

Meanwhile, the A69 issue is also coming up in the National Assembly this Wednesday. In the Sustainable Development Committee, MPs will examine a bill - adopted in the Senate last week - to retroactively validate decrees overturned by the courts. "It should allow for a resumption of work as quickly as possible," argued Jean Terlier, who is defending the bill in the lower house, on Tuesday.

This is a way of reversing the decision of the Toulouse administrative court, which had ruled that the work did not present an "overriding reason of major public interest" allowing for a derogation "from the objective of conserving natural habitats, wild fauna and flora."

This atypical form of law is provoking a backlash on the left: "We are simply proposing to trample on the separation of powers" between the legislative and judicial branches, protested LFI MP Anne Stambach-Terrenoir on Tuesday. Insoumis, ecologists, and communists are opposed to the text, as are the socialists, who decided at a group meeting to vote against it, unlike some of their senatorial counterparts. "A law should not replace a court decision," argues Arthur Delaporte (PS).

Conversely, the right and the National Rally are expected to largely support the initiative in committee. "Stopping the work is costing us millions of euros, and there is still the issue of opening up rural areas," argues Timothée Houssin (National Rally).

LR MP Ian Boucard will propose rewriting the text, not only to validate the decrees but also to give the project a "compelling reason of major public interest" and to provide constitutional guarantees for the drafting, with the idea of ​​ruling out any further interruption. "If work resumes, it must be for good and without interruption," he says. The bill is to be examined on June 2 in the chamber.

For their part, opponents of the motorway have already launched a call for a "funeral party" for the motorway at the beginning of July in the Tarn, the "Turboteuf The A69 is finished". "We will not allow their policy of accomplished destruction to continue to the end and argue that a construction site can no longer be stopped because it is already too advanced" , warn the organizers of the rally in the announcement text of the demonstration broadcast on a Telegram loop of opponents of the A69 and relayed, in particular, by the Soulèvements de la Terre.

Since the start of construction in 2023, the project to create a 53-kilometer highway linking Castres to Toulouse has been the subject of fierce protest, in various forms: treetop camps in the form of Zones to Defend (ZAD), hunger strikes, legal action and demonstrations.

Three major rallies have already brought together several thousand opponents in the Tarn region: in April, then October 2023, and finally in June 2024, the last two being marked by clashes with the police.