The administrative court of Lille on Friday rejected the request for interim release filed by the CGT which challenged the legality of the requisition by the prefecture of striking personnel from the TotalEnergies depot in Mardyck, near Dunkirk (North).
On Friday morning, another administrative court, that of Rouen, had already rejected an appeal by the CGT challenging the prefectural orders for the requisitioning of strikers, this time at the depot of the Esso-ExxonMobil refinery in Gravenchon, the only other site subject to a requisition in France.
In Lille, the administrative court ruled that
"by setting up a service aimed at ensuring, by a limited but sufficient number of employees, the only dispatch of fuel, the prefect of the North did not bring to the right to strike a serious and manifestly unlawful interference
”.
Faced with the scale of the supply problems in Hauts-de-France,
"only the requisition is, in this case, sufficient, in an emergency, to prevent the risk of a total shortage of automobile fuel"
, notes the court in its decision, consulted by AFP.
“While ad hoc police measures would be likely to remedy limited breaches of public order, they are no longer sufficient to ease the tensions observed, nor the risk of accidents associated with queues and vehicle abandonment
” , can we still read in the decision.
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“We are facing an extremely political decision
,” protested the lawyer for the CGT from the Flanders de Mardyck depot, Elsa Marcel.
"Legally, it is serious that there may be requisitions which the government assumes that the aim is to end the conflict
," she added.
During the hearing, the lawyers of the CGT, Elsa Marcel and Elsa Galaup, had accused the prefect of responding to
“government injunctions
” without having previously sought all the alternatives to the requisition of personnel.
“Vulnerable people” in danger
The Flandres depot, on strike since September 27,
“supplies at least half of the Hauts-de-France region, that is to say at least half of the 6 million inhabitants who today experience fuel supply difficulties”
, had pointed out the prefect of the North George-François Leclerc, present at the hearing.
He said the current crisis was putting
“vulnerable people at risk”
and hampering sectors of the regional economy.
To put an end to the
"disorders of public order"
, he had indicated that he had first put in place
"measures to safeguard certain essential professions"
, through priority access to certain stations, but that because of the disorder in service stations, these measures were
“no longer operational”
.
On Friday, the striking employees of TotalEnergies decided to continue their movement.
On the other hand, the strike was lifted successively Thursday and Friday in the only two refineries of the Esso-ExxonMobil group in France, in Fos-sur-Mer on Thursday and in Gravenchon in Normandy on Friday.