Le Tremblay-en-France: “Illegal” advertising panels along the A104 will have to be dismantled

The panels of anger. The cour administrative d’appel Paris rejected the request of a advertising agency from Juvisy-sur-Orge (Essonne), which had been ordered to remove the 18 signs that it had installed along the A104 motorway in Tremblay-en-France (Seine-Saint-Denis).

Ads that shouldn’t be seen from the motorway

On January 21, 2021, the mayor (ex-PCF), François Asensi, had indeed ordered Signal Service to “remove” these signs within thirty days: the Environmental Code prohibits “advertising devices (…) sealed to the ground” when they are “visible from a motorway, a connecting slip road or an expressway”. “Any advertising (…) must not be visible from the A104 motorway [RN n°2 bis] “, confirms the Local Advertising Regulations (RLP) of Tremblay-en-France.

The company then brought the matter before the Montreuil administrative court, but the court rejected its request on a formality issue in October 2021: the letter from the mayor of Tremblay-en-France did not constitute an administrative “decision” strictly speaking, from the magistrate’s point of view.

The company had appealed and the Paris Administrative Court of Appeal had ruled in its favour, giving it the right to at least have its application examined on the merits of the case. But the Montreuil Administrative Court had then once again dismissed it, in a judgment rendered this time on 8 June 2023.

The “decision is tainted with illegality“, nevertheless maintained on appeal Signal Service, to the extent that “the A104/RN2 cannot be considered as a road outside built-up areas”. But “the road in question is perfectly identified”, recalls the Paris administrative court of appeal in a judgment dated May 22, 2024, which has just been made public.

An “ambiguity” about the nature of the path

“Nor can the applicant usefully argue that the road in question is in reality the RN 2bis and not the A104, the ban targeting both roads, the Parisian judges continued. The argument based on the ambiguity over the nature of the road as a motorway or a national road is ineffective since the road in question is clearly identified, the ban is not subject to the nature of the road and the advertising devices are indeed located along this road.”

Finally, it is “not established by the documents in the case” that these advertising panels are in reality simple “pre-signs” excluded from the scope of the Environmental Code. Signal Service – which will have to pay 1,500 euros in legal costs to the municipality of Tremblay-en-France – has until July 22, 2024 to challenge this decision before the Council of State, the highest French administrative court.

/MJ (PressPepper)

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