The highest administrative jurisdiction considers that the government’s decision to return to this measure is “excess of power”.
Le Monde with afp
The Council of State has decided. After being suspended in August 2021 by the government and then downright repealed in July 2022, the technical control for two-wheelers was resettled on Monday October 31. Its application was scheduled for early 2023 before its cancellation by the government.
“The decision taken by the government on July 25, to return to the application of technical control to the” two-wheelers “which he had initially decided in August 2021, is illegal,” said the highest jurisdiction administrative in a press release, considering that it was an “excess of power”. On July 27, the Council of State had already considered illegal two decrees which aimed to delay the putting into force of the compulsory technical control in January 2023 then to suspend it.
According to the administrative body, the abolition of technical control should have been subject to the public consultation “given its direct and significant impact on the environment”.
Furthermore, the measures proposed since by the government to derogate from the European technical control obligation “do not comply” to European requirements “because they are only in the state of projects or because they do not make it possible to improve in a sufficiently and significant manner the safety of bikers on the road “, according to the Council of State.
a European obligation
The European Commission had introduced in 2014 the obligation for all the EU countries to institute before 2022 a technical control for two-wheelers of more than 125 cm3.
At the heart of the summer of 2021, the French government had ended up publishing a decree instituting it, but only from the beginning of 2023. First twist, Emmanuel Macron had immediately assured that he would never apply this decision because “It was not the time to annoy the French,” in the words used by an executive advisor. The Minister of Transport of the time Jean-Baptiste Djebbari had suspended it by decree.
The associations breathe, fed up the scooter and Paris without car had seized the Council of State according to an emergency procedure to claim the application of the European directive as soon as possible. The highest administrative court in the country had proved them right in May, enjoining the executive to apply it in October 2022.
On July 26, new twist, with the publication of a decree by which the Government repeated the very first decree establishing this control, arguing a clause in European legislation allowing to take place “alternative measures “.
It is on this July decree, attacked again by the same NGOs, that the Council of State was pronounced this time, the public rapporteur recommending his cancellation at the hearing.