Administrative justice has ruled.
The decision of the prefect of the North to terminate the contract with the State of the Averroès Muslim high school in Lille was validated this Monday by the courts which confirmed in summary proceedings the cessation of subsidies.
Two weeks after the hearing, this decision was eagerly awaited.
Vincent Brengarth, lawyer for the Averroès high school, did not mince his words: “A clear misuse of power”, “an administrative police measure which targets more the identity of the establishment and what it carries” than potential “administrative failures”.
In his eyes, the decision taken in December by Georges-François Leclerc, then prefect of the North, to break from the start of the school year in September 2024 the contract - and therefore the public subsidies - linking the State to the Lille high school, the main Muslim establishment of France and among the best high schools in the region, constituted “a double standard”.
Read alsoLycée Averroès in Lille: false nose of radical Islam or establishment of excellence?
A little earlier, the prefecture's lawyer, François Pinatel, had tried to brush aside the subject of Stanislas, whose name will never be mentioned: "I will not respond on this last point (
the "double standards"
), which is also contradicted by current events.
»
To justify the prefect's decision, Me Pinatel had put forward a “materially established adherence” of the Averroès high school “to doctrines clearly contrary to the values that private education under association contract must convey”.
François Pinatel recalled that a 2015 inspection “had pointed out” “sources of concern”: the “ambivalences of the establishment” and the “omnipresence” of religion.