Council of State's Assessment of Urgency Criterion

Extract

[...] Therefore, to what extent does the Council of State manage to preserve the notion of the general interest as an overarching and superior notion to categorical interests such as the notion of environmental interest? The decision will be commented on the basis of the two contentious points raised by the Council of State, namely the conditions of validity of the referral-suspension and the state of the administrative act that would be hypothetically tainted with illegality (II). I. On the conditions of validity of the referral-suspension The conditions of validity of the referral-suspension are based on principles extracted from the case law of the Council of State and on criteria of legality. [...]

[...] Therefore, the Council of State does not attach itself to present the theory raised by the judge of the interim suspension procedure as to the categorization of this illegality, which condition has, in order to grant the request for interim suspension procedure, necessarily been presented by the Administrative Tribunal following the arguments of the applicants. It is therefore not possible, solely on the basis of the decision of the Council of State, to appreciate the respect or disrespect of this criterion. B. [...]

[...] Council of State February 2024, Company The Potash Mines of Alsace - To what extent does the Council of State manage to preserve the notion of general interest as an overarching and superior notion to categorical interests such as the notion of environmental interest? In an intermediate position, 'President Sauvé sought to testify to the attachment of his jurisdiction to environmental requirements, in support of certain decisions of the Council of State (among the few that can be found in this sense), while founding his position on the need to reconcile environmental concerns with "other issues that are just as relevant to the general interest" ' (Gabriel Ullmann, 'The Council of State, a grave digger of the rights of third parties and the environment?' Journal of Environmental Law, vol no pp. [...]

[...] The refusal to observe the criterion of serious doubt on the legality of the act According to the Council of State, there is no need to 'pronounce on the existence of a serious doubt as to the legality of the contested decree' inasmuch as 'it results from all that precedes [ . ] that the condition of urgency to suspend the execution of this decree cannot be regarded as fulfilled'. The Council of State affirms in fact the position of a necessarily cumulative criterion in the categorization of the validity of the request for interim suspension procedure. [...]

[...] There is therefore, first of all, a finalistic dimension of the urgency criterion. But the Council of State also emphasizes a formal dimension of the urgency criterion: 'Urgency must be assessed objectively and taking into account all the circumstances of the case'. For the Council of State, precisely, the decision of the Administrative Tribunal does not follow materially the necessities of validity of this urgency criterion. In fact, the applicants 'do not advance any element allowing to establish that the start of the works of confinement of the waste on the site in question would present an immediate danger for the public interests they invoke', the Council of State recalling the numerous administrative authorizations and counter-expertises going in the sense of the prefectural authorization of the burial of waste on technical elements (CE 28 February 2001 'Prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes and Society South-East Sanitation' no. [...]