In Corsica, justice restores on appeal a map which "sanctuaries" 100.000 hectares of agricultural land

"The Court judges that the community of Corsica was able to legally specify, after the public inquiry and in accordance with the recommendations of the commission of inquiry, the criteria for defining strategic agricultural spaces, with regard, in particular, to sloping land “, specifies the administrative judicial body in a press release.

Within the plan for the development and sustainable development of Corsica (Padduc), the ESAs group together the land with the maximum agronomic potential and the irrigable areas of Corsica, i.e. more than 100.000 hectares in all the municipalities of the island (12% of the surface of Corsica). They cannot be built because they are reserved for agriculture.

The municipalities can, via a local urban plan, make the ESA constructible, provided that they protect surfaces of identical sizes and by demonstrating their agricultural value.

In 2018, the mapping of the ESAs - determined in 2015 under the mandate of the radical left Paul Giacobbi - had already been canceled by the administrative justice, which pointed to "procedural defects".

On November 5, 2020, after two years without mapping, a new map was adopted by the Assembly of Corsica.

The Bastia administrative court was then again seized by around twenty applicants, including several municipalities on the island (Lecci, Bonifacio, Albitreccia, Pietrosella, Calenzana) but also individuals and SCIs (real estate companies) who accused to this card the lack of clarity of its criteria.

The court decided to cancel this mapping in April 2022, which did not, however, call into question the principle of strategic agricultural spaces, which remained under the supervision of state services.

He had justified the cancellation by considering "that the community of Corsica should have initiated a review procedure, rather than a modification procedure, that the public had been deprived of information on the project and that the permanent commission of the Assembly of Corsica should have been consulted beforehand".

The Padduc, a document with political overtones voted for the first time in 2015 by the left and the nationalists, aimed to curb real estate speculation while allowing balanced economic development not focused on all tourism and construction but leaving the spotlight to the 'agriculture.