justice rules in favor of the municipality which does not want it

The standoff between the mayor (Les Républicains) of Ecully Sébastien Michel and the environmentalist president of the Metropolis of Lyon Bruno Bernard continues over a center for unaccompanied minors which must be set up in this western town Lyonnais. A round was won by the mayor against Grand Lyon.

The Lyon administrative court rejected on Tuesday January 21, 2025 the request from the Metropolis which asked the municipality to open this migrant center in a building in Ecully. The community had decided to urgently take legal action to move forward with a project for a accommodation center for young migrants.

The Métropole de Lyon wants to move forward with its project

Like departments elsewhere, the Métropole de Lyon's mission is to accommodate young unaccompanied minors present on its territory. In this context, it decided in 2024 to renovate premises belonging to it in Ecully, which have already welcomed Ukrainian refugees, to transform them into a reception center for 70 young migrants.

To try to advance its project, the Metropolis on Monday summoned the town hall for interim relief, but also the Rhône prefecture, believing that it could have replaced the mayor to issue the authorizations allowing the opening of the center and therefore the reception of young migrants.

“The mayor of Ecully has, at this stage, not committed any obvious illegality”

Justice considers in its decision on Tuesday that “the mayor of Ecully has, at this stage, not committed any manifest illegality and therefore rejects the request”. She adds that “the request presented by the Forum Refugees association in July 2024 was a request for authorization to carry out work, and not a request for authorization to open”.

Under these conditions, and taking into account the confusion made in the presentation of its requests by the Forum Refugees association, he considers that the metropolis of Lyon has not established that the mayor of Ecully would have been notified of a regular and that he would have, on the date of the decision, taken a position on a possible request for opening to the public. Therefore, he judges that the mayor of Ecully has not, at this stage, committed any manifest illegality and therefore rejects the request.

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In a press release published Tuesday evening, Mayor Sébastien Michel affirms “that it is not normal for a president of the metropolis to attack a mayor in court to impose his views on him”.

“In any case, this does not correspond to the idea I have of local democracy, and I hope that appeasement will prevail from now on,” he said.

“The mayor of Écully is playing for time”

“The mayor of Écully is playing for time, for eight months nothing has happened, he is preventing the Metropolis from exercising its jurisdiction in matters of emergency accommodation”, had pleaded earlier in the day, the lawyer of the Gilles Le Châtelier community before the administrative court.

The Métropole de Lyon has not yet officially expressed its reaction after the court's decision.

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