Justice condemns the French State for breaching its climate commitment

The French justice has condemned this Wednesday the State Administration for failing to comply with its own commitments, both international and national, in the fight against climate change.

The Administrative Court of Paris has recognized that the State is “responsible for climate inaction” and has imposed the payment of a symbolic euro to each of the four NGOs that had sued it: Greenpeace, Notre Affaire à Tous, the Hulot Foundation for Nature and Man, and Oxfam France.

Two months have been given to examine how it obliges the Government to take steps to correct this inaction.

But more important than this compensation for the “moral damage” to these associations, a period of two months has been given to examine how it forces the Government to take measures to correct this inaction, said a Greenpeace spokeswoman.

It could oblige him in two ways, with fines to compensate for the damages with money or with a series of objectives that he should achieve in predetermined deadlines, which is the preferred option for the plaintiffs, backed by 2.3 million signatures.

In fact, at the hearing held on January 14, they had insisted that the Administration did not comply with some legal texts in which it made commitments to address global warming, in particular the Paris Agreements and the National Low Carbon Strategy on reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

“The general idea is for the government to take swift and strong action to reduce CO2 emissions,” the Greenpeace spokeswoman said.

In 2018, four NGOs sent a letter to several ministers to criticize the administration’s inaction and demand reparation for the damages caused by that attitude.

The initiative of what the promoters have baptized as “the case of the century” began in December 2018 when the four NGOs sent a letter to several ministers to criticize the inaction of the Administration and demand reparation for the damages caused with that attitude.

In the absence of a satisfactory response, in March 2019 they took the procedure to the Justice with the presentation of a dispute before the Administrative Court of Paris, which launched an investigation.

The government rejected the accusations in the process and stressed that with its 2019 energy and climate law it has reinforced the objectives and has set as a goal a 40% decrease in fossil energy consumption by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2050.

In a video posted on social networks after the opinion was known, several celebrities who support the platform, such as actresses Marion Cotillard or Juliette Binoche, congratulate themselves on its success.

The former French Minister of Ecology Nicolas Hulot, whose foundation is one of the four complainants, stressed that the sentence “is the victory of those who understand the urgency of the crisis” climate.

Source: The Vanguard