The end of straw huts in Grand Travers: the Toulouse administrative court of appeal rules in favor of the Grande-Motte Environnement association

Les plages privées ne pourront plus s’installer sur la plage du Grand Travers. Midi Libre – Archives RICHARD DE HULLESSEN

Beach concessions will not be set up this summer on Grand Travers beach: the municipality's appeal to the Administrative Court of Toulouse has not been heard.

The Toulouse administrative court of appeal handed down its judgment this Thursday, April 11, concerning the La Grande-Motte straw huts and their installation on Grand Travers beach. The Montpellier administrative court had already, on December 21, canceled the precarious permits issued for the seasons 2023 and 2024 on three allocated lots (lots 12, 13 and 15), giving reason to the Grande-Motte Environnement association.

The municipality had appealed this judgment, still requesting a reprieve for the three beach concessions but, seeming to anticipate this defeat in court, it had submitted to the vote of elected officials a new location. The deliberation was voted on during the municipal council meeting on March 25.

A plan B, in an area less sensitive from an environmental point of view and closer to the city center but which obviously does not really satisfy the mayor, Stéphan Rossignol. The latter points the finger at the economic activity generated by these summer establishments, and denounces his opponents qualified as "cantors of punitive ecology". The mayor estimates that "Grand Travers beach has hosted these beach concessions for 25 years with the strictest respect for their environment" and calculates that “they represented only 0.45 % of the beach area".

Not really a good loser, the mayor declares "we are implementing alternative solutions on which we had already worked in advance, and we will fight to ensure that the inconsistent regulatory texts be modified".