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"Case of the century": the State condemned for climate inaction, and after?

2021-10-14T14:59:08.909Z


The Paris administrative court on Thursday delivered its final decision in "The Affair of the Century", a lawsuit filed against the State for not av


After the cheers, the questions.

Environmental associations including Greenpeace, Oxfam and the Hulot Foundation, which had attacked the State for climate inaction, welcomed this Thursday a "historic case law".

In its final decision on the trial dubbed "the Affair of the Century" and supported by a petition from more than 2.3 million citizens, the administrative court ordered the state to take "all necessary measures" to repair the ecological damage of exceeding the ceiling that he himself set for greenhouse gas emissions between 2015 and 2018.

On the side of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, we are also pleased to have escaped the "penalty of 78 million euros every six months".

We see in this decision "the mark of the judge's confidence in the State's commitment to act by all possible means to meet its climate commitments".

So who won ?

"It's not a football match, it doesn't work like that", answers the lawyer specializing in environmental law Arnaud Gossement.

“Objectively, the judgment is formidable from a symbolic point of view because it recognizes the fault of the State, but from the point of view of concrete answers on the reparations of damages, much less”, admits the lawyer.

Objective set in stone

In the Affair of the Century, the State is accused of having exceeded its emission reduction commitments for the period 2015 and 2018. Or 15 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, according to the learned calculations of the administrative court. In February, the courts rejected the associations' request for reparations for the damage already committed. It remained for this last episode to know what the court would decide for the future. On this point, the court recognizes its own limits “And it is logical, we turned to a judge not to Superman. He is not able to quantify the consequences of this going beyond, explains Arnaud Gossement. Is it the Roya floods, the drought and the fires in the South? "

In the end, the government must pay 1 euro for moral damage to associations and "by December 31, 2022, take measures to reduce the ecological damage caused by the illegal exceeding of carbon budgets between 2015 and 2018". The administrative judge does not describe the actions to be implemented, he even leaves the choice of measures "at the discretion of the government". He finally gives a very long time to enforce this decision, "for an emission ceiling decided in 2015, and respond to a complaint lodged in 2019, and this, in the midst of a climate emergency", quips Arnaud Gossement.

“A not so long delay,” finds Célia Gautier, on the contrary, in charge of climate issues at the Nicolas Hulot foundation.

If we read the decision, the government has fourteen months to remove 15 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, that is to say, it must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions twice as quickly.

The judge clearly indicated that he would take stock in 2022. "

With the “Affair of the Century”, the objective was to make climate policy inevitable and binding.

“Mission successful,” says Célia Gautier.

And even if the government changes, and even if power were to fall into the hands of climate skeptics, "the court ruling anchors these goals in stone."

Source: leparis

All life articles on 2021-10-14

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