The Marseille administrative court of appeal restored on Monday the map of Corsica’s Strategic Agricultural Spaces (ESA) which protected 100,000 hectares for agriculture on the island before being canceled in 2022 by the administrative court of Bastia.
The Court considers that the Corsican community was legally able to specify, after the public inquiry and in accordance with the recommendations of the inquiry commission, the criteria for defining strategic agricultural spaces, with regard, in particular, to sloping land, specifies the administrative judicial body in a press release.
Within Corsica’s planning and sustainable development plan (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 Corsica. the (12% of the surface of Corsica). They cannot be built because they are reserved for agriculture.
Municipalities can, via a local urban plan, make the ESA constructible, provided that they protect areas of identical sizes and by demonstrating their agricultural value.
Curb real estate speculation
In 2018, the mapping of 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 cartography, a new map was adopted by the Assembly of Corsica. The administrative court of Bastia had then again been seized by about twenty applicants, including several municipalities of the island (Lecci, Bonifacio, Albitreccia, Pietrosella, Calenzana) but also individuals and SCI (real estate civil companies) who criticized this map the lack of clarity in its criteria.
The court decided to cancel this mapping in April 2022, which did not, however, call into question the principle of strategic agricultural areas, 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 committee 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 on agriculture .