The creation in France of a technical control for motorized two-wheelers is a soap opera with twists and turns. On Wednesday, the public rapporteur of the Council of State recommended the implementation of this measure on which the public powers retracted.
The decision will be made in the coming weeks, but it will probably not be the epilogue of this measure launched in 2014 by the European Commission. Its objective was to launch before the beginning of 2022 a technical inspection for two-wheeled vehicles of more than 125 cm3.
In the middle of the summer of 2021, the French government had ended up publishing a decree that established it, but from the beginning of 2023. First twist, Emmanuel Macron had immediately assured that he would never apply this decision because “it is not like that”. time to annoy the French”, according to an adviser to the executive. Therefore, the Minister of Transport at the time, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, had suspended it by decree.
The associations Respire, Ras le Scoot and Paris Sans Car had gone to the Council of State in an urgent procedure to demand the application of the European directive as soon as possible. And the highest administrative court in the country agreed with them in May, ordering the Executive to apply it from October 2022.
disparate measurements
But on July 26 there was a new twist, with the publication of a decree by which the Government repealed the first decree that established this control, in the name of a clause in European legislation that allowed taking “alternative measures” in its place.
Coincidence of the calendar, the Council of State made public its decision on the merits of the case the following day, again disavowing the executive. And it is therefore on the last decree of July, attacked again by the same NGOs, that the Council of State considered this Wednesday. The public rapporteur – a magistrate whose opinions are generally, although not always, followed by the judges – recommended its annulment… and therefore the reinstatement of the decree that establishes technical control.
In particular, it considered that in the face of a risk of fatal accident 22 times greater for motorcyclists than for drivers of light vehicles, the alternative provisions proposed by the government only made up a “set of disparate measures” that did not allow responding to the criteria of the European directive. However, he pointed out that the entry into force of the control would be “subject” to the publication of the application decrees and to a “gradual increase in the burden.”
But the solicitor for the requesting NGOs, Camille Mialot, told AFP that he had sent the prime minister in advance a “request for the adoption of the necessary measures for the request”, which paves the way for a new legal request to get it. if the government were to play for time.
Source: BFM TV
