France
In re Climate Resilience Bill
Jurisdiction: Constitutional Council
Side A: Valérie Rabault and other parliamentarians (Individual)
Core objectives: Whether a climate resilience bill, due to be passed in Autumn 2021, was insufficient to protect constitutional rights.
Summary
On August 13, 2021, the Constitutional Council rejected a petition by parliamentarians to declare as unconstitutional a climate resilience bill, due to be passed in Autumn 2021. The parliamentarians alleged that law would deprive citizens of the constitutional right to live in a healthy and ecologically balanced environment by failing to enact strong enough provisions in time to meet carbon neutrality by 2050 goals. The Council set aside this challenge to the whole law on the grounds that the Council does not have the jurisdiction to hear challenges to the entire law, and that the parliamentarians did not challenge specific provisions in their inadequacy claims.The Parliamentarians notably argued that article 215 do not apply to the warehouses of e-commerce companies, even if their establishment or extension would lead to soil artificialisation. The Council's decision states that contested provisions do not, by themselves, create any difference in treatment between e-commerce businesses and those engaged in retail business. Although the vast majority of the bill was declared constitutional, fourteen articles (16, 34, 38, 84, 102, 105, 152, 161, 168, 195, 204, 221, 235 and 255) of the bill were deleted because they are legal riders and two articles censored (81 and 173). One of this article introduced the possibility for a lessor to terminate a contract due to failure to carry out energy saving work.
Case documents
from the Grantham Research Institute
from the Grantham Research Institute
