Notre-Dame-des-Landes: justice rejects Vinci who claimed 1,6 billion euros from the State

The Nantes administrative court rejected "the concession company's request for the State to be ordered to pay it 1,6 billion euros", it said in a press release accompanying the decision published on Wednesday. .

“The State did not commit a fault in abandoning, for reasons of general interest, the airport project at Notre-Dame-des-Landes,” underlines the court in its press release. “The concession company will therefore only be able to claim termination compensation and compensation for its shortfall.”

“The termination of the (airport) concession is justified by reasons of general interest,” he said.

"The amount of this compensation will be fixed later: the court will have to take into account the gains provided to the company Aéroport du Grand Ouest (AGO) or to its shareholder companies by their possible designation as new concessionaires of the current Nantes-Atlantique airport ", for which a new call for tenders was launched in December for its redevelopment.

For Vinci, "the contentious debate will continue on compensation before the administrative court until it rules on the merits, probably not before 2026 or 2027" because the court "did not reject the request for AGO based on the clauses of its concession contract.

“The administrative court has only rejected ancillary requests at this stage and in questionable terms,” believes its press service, which specifies that “AGO is studying the follow-up to be given.”

85% owned by the French construction group Vinci, the AGO company claimed nearly 1,6 billion euros, estimating that the abandonment, in January 2018, by the government of the time of an agreement concluded by AGO and the State for the concession of airports - including that of Notre-Dame-des-Landes - was "irregular".

As early as 2019, the Minister of Transport Elisabeth Borne indicated that the State was negotiating compensation with Vinci linked to the abandonment of the airport project at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, which Vinci had formally denied.

Born in the 1960s and relaunched in 2000, the Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport project, in Loire-Atlantique, has since become an emblem of environmental struggles in France, including in 2009 the occupation of the site by activists, nicknamed “zadistes”.

Its abandonment had led to violent evictions and left room for a land headache to redistribute land in the Deferred Development Zone (ZAD).

The Vinci group manages 12 airports in France, including Lyon-Saint Exupéry, Rennes Bretagne, Toulon-Hyères and Nantes-Atlantique, and 70 around the world, according to its official website.