By Editorial team Le Petit Courrier – L’Echo
Published on
May 6, 24 at 4:00 p.m.
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THE Administrative Court of Orléans deemed legal the decision of mayor of Noizay (Indre-et-Loire) of December 16, 2020 not to publish a Tribune of the opposition group “ Noizay at the Heart ” in the review annual of the municipality.
On December 11, 2020, the mayor Pierre Morin had in fact refused by email to “publish in the municipal annual review” a article sent the day before by the group of elected opposition representatives “Noizay au Cœur”.
A request for a court penalty of €1,000 per number
The councilor had thus decided to publish “instead” a other text “previously transmitted by this same group” led by Willy Guignard.
The latter had initially presented “a free appeal” against this decision, but in vain. He therefore brought the matter before the administrative court of Orléans to have these two decisions annulled and obtain the publication of the censored article with a penalty of “€1000 per late number”.
Internal regulations of the municipal council
In fact, “in municipalities of 1000 inhabitants and more, when general information on the achievements and management of the municipal council is disseminated by the municipality, a space is reserved for the expression of councilors (…) having declared not to belong to the municipal majority,” said the General code of local and regional authorities (CGCT).
Then, the terms of application of these provisions are defined “by the internal regulations of the municipal council”.
A text too long, say the judges
In this case, in Noizay, it provides that the newsletter “will include a reserved space for the expression of advisors not belonging to the majority” up to a “maximum” amount of 1/30th of the total space of the publication.
However, “the annual municipal review published at the end of 2020 contained twenty-eight pages”, begin by noting the administrative judges in a decision dated April 11, 2024 which has just been made public.
“The space reserved for the expression of elected opposition representatives could not be, in any event, above the waist of a page”, they deduce.
However, the article sent by the elected representatives of the opposition on December 10, 2020 exceeds “at least the format of a full page” of the magazine, notes the administrative court of Orléans: it therefore did not respect “the requirements of the internal regulations of the municipal council”.
The elected complainant must pay €1,500 in legal costs to the municipality
The commune of Noizay could therefore “rightly” and “for this reason alone” refuse the publication of this article in the journal. Ultimately, Willy Guignard was disavowed.
He will also have to pay €1500 to the municipality for his legal costs.
CB (PressPepper)
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