The Paris Administrative Court recognizes the responsibility of the State services but rejects the requests for compensation for the complainants for anxiety damage.
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This is a first advance for the victims of Chlordecone: justice has recognized the responsibility of the State in this health scandal which has aroused indignation for several years in the Antilles. In a deliberation rendered Friday, June 24, the Paris administrative court estimated that “the state services committed faulty negligence by allowing the sale of the same antiparasitic specialty containing 5 % of chlordecone”, by approving this pesticide without Previously “to establish, under the prescribed conditions, its safety over the health of the population”, but also “by authorizing the continuation of sales beyond the legally planned deadlines”.
Substance classified as a probable carcinogenic by the World Health Organization in 1979, Chlordecone had, ultimately, prohibited in France in 1990. But successive ministerial derogations allowed, until 1993, the use of this pesticides organochlorine in the banana groves of Martinique and Guadeloupe. Very persistent, the molecule caused significant pollution of soils, rivers and marine environments in the two islands. Local food production is largely contaminated, and with it, more than 90 % of the Guadeloupe and Martinican population, which presents an incidence of prostate cancer among the highest in the world.
” Expected repair policy
In this collective action started in 2019, on the initiative of several West Indian associations, 1,241 applicants had asked the State to compensate them, up to 15,000 euros each, for the prejudice of anxiety born from the contamination of territories. A request rejected on Friday by administrative magistrates, who estimated that “the applicants do not report any personal and detailed element to justify the prejudice of anxiety which they prevail” and do not establish sufficiently ” that they would have been exposed to a significant risk of developing one of the serious pathologies “caused by the pesticide. The applicants’ lawyer announced that he intended to appeal.
This decision of the administrative court was welcomed with a mixed satisfaction of circumspection in the Antilles. Elie Califer, deputy (PS) of Guadeloupe, praised on Twitter “an important step which now calls for a real responsibility and compensation for victims commensurate with the drama and the damage suffered”. The judgment “does not constitute the culmination of our fight”, recalls Serge Letchimy, president of the executive council of the territorial collectivity of Martinique. “The battles that await us are still numerous, so that justice passes, so that the damage caused on the environment, on our health and that a real compensation policy for the victims are implemented”, Add the Martinican elected official.
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