This article highlights three emblematic cases where environmental activism came face to face with the police and judiciary in France: actions against mega-basins in Sainte-Soline, actions against the A69 motorway construction site and an action to remove portraits of Emmanuel Macron.
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Sainte-Soline: civil liberties under attack
On 29 October 2022, thousands of demonstrators converged on the Sainte-Soline site in the Poitevin marshlands to oppose the construction of a "mega-basin" – a massive water-retention basin for agricultural irrigation. The Sainte-Soline basin can hold up to 628,000 cubic metres, or 250 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Clashes with the police resulted in dozens of injuries on both sides. In March 2023, Sainte-Soline was the scene of further clashes, with several hundred demonstrators and around forty police officers injured. In January 2024, those organisers of the demonstrations who were prosecuted received suspended prison sentences, fines and, above all, a ban on approaching the construction sites or entering the Deux-Sèvres département where the works were taking place. These sentences have not diminished the success of the movement; indeed they have fuelled it. By the end of April 2024, more than 160,000 people had signed an appeal in support of “Soulèvements de la Terre” on that organisation's website, and further demonstrations are planned for July 2024 before the opening of the Olympic Games.
The issue of civil liberties was omnipresent from the outset. In the wake of the 29 October 2022 rally, Gérald Darmanin, the French interior minister, had no hesitation in declaring that "the modus operandi of those opposing the basins was ecoterrorism", thus adopting a stance of criminalising activists. The term “ecoterrorism”, which has no legal scope, was used deliberately with two objectives in mind: to signal a policy of repression, and to shift the blame for that repression onto the actions of environmental activists.
In March 2023, the minister announced the dissolution of Soulèvements de la Terre. But in August this decision was suspended by a summary judgement and then annulled in November by the Council of State, France’s highest administrative court, on the grounds that "it was not an appropriate and proportionate measure". The legal battle was therefore lost by the government, but only by a hair's breadth. The rapporteur in charge of the case had followed the interior ministry's lead and recommended dissolution, arguing that Soulèvements de la Terre fell outside the realm of civil disobedience and was attacking private property. The judges of the Council of State’s litigation section – a prestigious and experienced panel of judges – then chose not to follow the advice of this rapporteur, which is unusual. This decision clearly demonstrates the importance for associations and citizens of the guarantee offered by such judges of civil liberties.
The debate is not limited to the judicial sphere. France Nature Environnement, France's largest environmental NGO, lodged a complaint in March 2024 with the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders, denouncing the fact that “since Sainte-Soline, the government has constantly criminalised nature defenders and stifled environmental democracy, according to a logic of surveillance and repression of civil society”. The UN Special Rapporteur himself has multiplied his warnings, writing that “in France (...) as elsewhere, repression against climate activists is increasing,” and denouncing the lack of legal and juridical protection for environmental activists who act “for the good of all.”
If we look at the specific demand made at Sainte-Soline – the rejection of productivist agriculture that destroys biodiversity and leads to the privatisation of water – the government's response to the farmers' movement between the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024 offers a striking contrast. In January 2024, farmers’ blockades and destruction of public property, as well as their threats to block the approaches to Paris, were met with great indulgence. Indeed, the government proposed regressive measures on biodiversity and toughened up laws surrounding on-the-ground activism. In July 2023, just after the dissolution of Soulèvements de la Terre, Le Monde journalist Stéphane Foucart, after detailing a the brutality committed by certain farmers belonging to the FNSEA (France’s main farmers’ union), rightly declared that "one of the challenges of the environmental struggle is to show that violence takes many forms and that these are unequally perceived by society". He noted the paradox by which violence in defence of private interests might be seen as legitimate whereas violence in opposition to the appropriation or destruction of common goods such as water or biodiversity could "appear intolerable".
For French environmental activism, Sainte-Soline marked a turning point
The success of the Soulèvements de la Terre bears witness to a movement that combines ecological urgency, the defence of local heritage (the Poitevin marshlands), the protection of a common good (water), and an attachment to civil liberties. But this mobilisation came up against a hostile attitude on the part of government, which found itself under pressure from powerful interests to choose sides. At the Paris International Agricultural Show, the FNSEA rejected the idea of a debate involving both Emmanuel Macron and Soulèvements de la Terre. Instead, it raised the stakes by demanding new concessions from the government. These were quickly granted.
The A69 motorway project and the risk of new violence
Initiated back in 1994, the Toulouse-Castres motorway was declared to be of public interest in 2018. Work began on it in 2022. Environmental groups have been on the front foot against the project, combining legal action, petitions and demonstrations to protest the felling of hundred-year-old trees and the destruction of farmland – the total surface area of the project in its final form will be 420 hectares, of which 316 hectares is currently farmland. Even official bodies have expressed reservations about the project. For the Conseil National de Protection de la Nature, the putative motorway is not of "major public interest", while the Environmental Authority held that "health impacts, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions have been underestimated". The latter also noted that planning for the project had "only considered roads, without sufficient exploration of reasonable alternative solutions that are less carbon-intensive and consume less space". An alternative project involving the renovation of Route Nationale 126, supported by NGOs, has been drawn up with the help of several local authorities.
In recent weeks, a group of organisations has denounced the obstacles faced by "squirrels" (activists perched in trees to mark their opposition to the project’s planned tree-felling), in particular their difficulty in obtaining supplies due to a blockade by gendarmes. They have lodged two complaints with the European Court of Human Rights, without effect to date. The evacuation of this so-called ZAD (zone à défendre) in February-March 2024 was the cause of violent clashes between law enforcement and activists, and also led to the filing of a complaint with a court in Toulouse for endangerment of life.
After visiting the site in February 2024, UN special rapporteur Michel Forst called on the French government to take immediate action to protect the activists. He also demanded an investigation and sanctions against the police. On the ground, tensions continue to mount. In March, Christophe Ramond, the Socialist leader of the Tarn departmental council, stated that "green terrorists" had turned the area into a "zone of lawlessness". Pointing to the risk of violence, some forty NGOs (including Alternatiba, Oxfam, Greenpeace and Youth for Climate) called on the government to suspend the project.
Prosecution for those who removed portraits of Emmanuel Macron, with mixed results
Beginning in February 2019, environmental activists linked to Action Non-Violente COP21 (ANV-COP21) removed 149 official portraits of Emmanuel Macron from town halls across France. This movement is the "resistance" branch of the Alternatiba association, and advocates the use of civil disobedience. The pictures were then used at events to raise awareness of climate chaos and its social consequences. The events included an assembly of Yellow Vests; an action in Lyon where children were asked to breathe air laden with fine particles; another at a nature site near Orléans threatened by a planned motorway bridge; May Day processions, etc. These actions reached their grand finale during the G7 summit in Bayonne in August 2019, where the portraits of Emmanuel Macron, which the police had been trying to track down all over France, were carried upside down by marching activists.
Those involved in these actions were systematically prosecuted. Trials were held throughout France, some of which are still in progress. In these court cases, the décrocheurs (unhookers) invoked civil disobedience, arguing the need for action in the face of the imminent danger posed by global warming. They also invoked their freedom of expression. In several cases, the judges acquiesced in these arguments and acquitted them, recognising either a state of necessity or freedom of expression. For example, the Lyon criminal court that acquitted a group of portrait-removers ruled that "in the face of the state's failure to comply with objectives that may be perceived as the bare minimum in a vital area, the means by which citizens express themselves in a democratic country cannot be reduced to the votes cast in elections. They must invent other forms of participation as part of a duty of critical vigilance". In other cases, fines were imposed. However, where the decision was in favour of the portrait-removers, the public prosecutor's office usually appealed.
This situation has led the Court of Cassation, France’s highest appeals court, to rule twice on the subject. In September 2021, although it did not recognise the state of necessity, it judged that removing the portraits was an exercise of freedom of expression and so overturned the conviction. In May 2022, on the other hand, the court dismissed an appeal by activists who had been given suspended fines of several hundred euros by appeals courts. It ruled that, unlike the previous conviction, these fines did not disproportionately infringe on freedom of expression.
Even though the trials resulted in light or even symbolic sentences, it is significant that the Court of Cassation refused to venture beyond the issue of free expression and to recognise the state of necessity invoked by the portrait-removers. Offences committed in the name of civil disobedience are difficult to judge in the absence of a clear legal concept, which gives the judge considerable discretion. The result can be arbitrary accusations and sanctions.
In France there has been a significant increase in the resources and force deployed by law enforcement against environmental activists. There has also been a growing mobilisation of the justice system, both by the authorities against activists and by the activists themselves when appealing in defence of their actions. This is consonant with the history of the environmental movement, where law has been a central feature.
Litigation provides a forum for promoting the validity of policy demands, and a way to publicise and amplify them. The legal debate that surrounds environmental activism therefore has a social and political resonance. Today, this is an area where fundamental public freedoms are at stake. The specific nature of green activism, as well as the need to take into account urgency and necessity of action, often raise unprecedented questions for the courts to adjudicate. The determination of governments to criminalise activism is also a challenge to the independence of the judiciary, in a context of intense societal polarisation and increasing external threats.
This article first appeared here: fr.boell.org
The views and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union.
