The Council of State has decided. After being suspended in August 2021 by the government and then outright repealed in July 2022, technical control for two-wheelers was reinstated on Monday, October 31. Its application was scheduled for early 2023 before its cancellation by the government.
“The decision taken by the government on July 25, to reverse the application of technical control to “two-wheelers” which it had initially decided in August 2021, is illegal”estimated the highest administrative court in a press release, considering that it was a “excess of power”. On July 27, the Council of State had already deemed illegal two decrees which aimed to delay the entry into force of the compulsory technical inspection until January 2023 and then to suspend it altogether.
According to the administrative body, the abolition of technical control should have been subject to public consultation “taking into account its direct and significant impact on the environment”.
In addition, the measures proposed since by the government to derogate from the European obligation of technical control “do not comply” to European requirements “because they are only at the draft stage or because they do not allow a sufficiently effective and significant improvement in the safety of motorcyclists on the road”according to the Council of State.
A European bond
In 2014, the European Commission introduced the obligation for all EU countries to institute before the start of 2022 a technical inspection for two-wheelers over 125 cm3.
In the heart of the summer of 2021, the French government had ended up publishing a decree establishing it, but only from the beginning of 2023. First twist, Emmanuel Macron had immediately assured that he would never apply this decision because “it was not the time to bother the French”, in the words of an executive adviser. The Minister of Transport at the time Jean-Baptiste Djebbari had suspended it by decree.
The associations Respire, Ras le Scoot and Paris without a car had seized the Council of State according to an emergency procedure to demand the application of the European directive as soon as possible. The highest administrative court in the country agreed with them in May, ordering the executive to apply it from October 2022.
On July 26, there was a new twist, with the publication of a decree by which the government repealed the very first decree establishing this control, arguing that a clause in European legislation allowing taking instead “alternative measures”.
It was on this July decree, attacked again by the same NGOs, that the Council of State ruled this time, the public rapporteur recommending its cancellation at the hearing.