The Paris court has just canceled the legal proceedings launched by the oil group TotalEnergies against the Greenpeace association, which accuses it of underestimating its carbon footprint.
“As the oil and gas major celebrates its 100th anniversary today, the courts ruled in favor of Greenpeace, judging the summons too imprecise to allow it to usefully defend itself on the merits,” declared the NGO in a press release, adding that TotalEnergies is ordered to pay 15,000 euros to Greenpeace France and Factor X for the costs incurred for the procedure.
TotalEnergies had summoned the NGO for “dissemination of misleading information” to the stock markets after the publication at the end of 2022 of a Greenpeace report, said it was taking “note of the judge's decision” of the Paris judicial court and examining “the follow-up to be given”.
“A great victory for freedom of expression”
At the time Greenpeace unveiled an estimated calculation of the multinational's greenhouse gas emissions. According to the NGO, these would have been almost four times greater than those declared by TotalEnergies for the year 2019, i.e. nearly 1.6 billion tonnes compared to 455 million tonnes CO2. TotalEnergies asked the civil judge to force Greenpeace France to delete the report and all related publications, under penalty of 2,000 euros per day. She also requested that Greenpeace France be ordered to pay her “symbolic” 1 euro in damages, and 50,000 euros in legal costs.
“This is a great victory for freedom of expression, not only for Greenpeace but also for all of civil society and the world of research which must be able to question the extent of the climate impact of TotalEnergies and companies pollutants. On the day of the 100th anniversary of the multinational widely contested by the climate movement for its destructive activities, justice confirms that the law protects our fundamental freedoms in the face of attempts at intimidation by economic powers,” declared Clara Gonzales, lawyer at Greenpeace France .