Pollution: the French state ordered to pay 10 million euros, a record

Published on : 08/04/2021 – 16:57

The note is steep for the French state. Poor student in the fight against pollution, he was condemned, Wednesday, August 4, by the Council of State to pay 10 million euros for not having sufficiently strengthened his system against air pollution, a sum record. The decision was described in advance as “historic” by NGOs.

Friends of the Earth, at the origin of this action, but also Greenpeace are among the NGOs complaining in this emblematic case of a scourge that kills 40,000 per year in France.

The sum, the highest ever imposed to force the state to apply a decision of the administrative justice, reflects the repeated failure of successive governments to fully comply with the injunctions of the highest French administrative court.

Three-year deadline to reduce fine particle pollution

The first decision in this case dates back to July 2017. The Council of State then ordered the State to implement plans to reduce the levels of PM10 particles (diameter less than or equal to 10 microns) and / or carbon dioxide. nitrogen (NO2, particularly associated with road traffic) in thirteen zones.

But three years later, despite the roadmaps adopted, justice noted values ​​still exceeded for 8 of them. She then gave the state six months to toughen up its measures.

At the end of January 2021, the Council of State launched an analysis to assess the new policies, in particular the planned generalization of low-emission zones limiting traffic in large cities, put forward by the State.

But if the judges do note an improvement in several of the areas concerned, they point to an exceeding of the pollution limit thresholds or an “unconsolidated” return below these thresholds in five agglomerations for NO2 (Paris, Lyon, Marseille-Aix, Toulouse and Grenoble) and in Paris for PM10.

“The State cannot be regarded as having taken sufficient measures to ensure the full execution of the decisions” of 2017 and 2020, they believe. “If all the measures put forward by the Minister (of the Ecological Transition) should have the effect of continuing to improve the situation observed to date, the uncertainties surrounding the adoption or the conditions for the implementation of some of them, as well as the absence of a reliable assessment of their effects in the areas concerned, do not allow, in the state of the investigation, to consider that they will be of a nature to put an end to the still overruns. observed or to consolidate the situation of non-overrun “, insists the decision.

Ten million euros paid to public bodies combating air pollution

This sum of 10 million euros concerns the first semester of 2021. The Council of State will re-examine the actions of the government for the second semester at the beginning of 2022 and may “again order the payment of a new fine of 10 million euros, which could possibly be increased or reduced “, specified in a press release the highest French administrative court, increasingly active in environmental matters.

In general, the penalties are paid to the state budget, but the state itself being the debtor in this case, the judges have innovated in terms of beneficiaries. The Council of State thus allocated 100,000 euros to Friends of the Earth.

The rest is divided between several public bodies engaged in the fight against air pollution: the Ecological Transition Agency (Ademe), Center for Studies and Expertise on Risks, the Environment, Mobility and planning (Cerema), the National Health Security Agency (Anses), the National Institute for the Industrial Environment and Risks (Ineris), and four regional air quality monitoring associations.

While some applicants demanded the establishment of a specific fund that could finance projects dedicated to the fight against air pollution, NGOs are concerned that the State will then reduce the budget of these public bodies by the same amount. .

With AFP