The Council of State has decided to cancel the regulation of the Municipal College of Schaerbeek linked to the extension of the green zone in the municipality.
In October 2019, the Municipal College had adopted a regulation aimed at removing the blue zone, an area in which it is possible to park for free for two hours, to transform it into a green zone, where parking is paid. This decision extended the paying green zones to the whole of the municipal territory, excluding the red zones, once morest 50% previously.
Following this decision, around 250 inhabitants of the municipality expressed their dissatisfaction by going to protest during a municipal council in February 2020. Some 7,500 Schaerbeekois had also mobilized to sign a petition to challenge the legality of this decision. , which they presented to the municipal council.
An action for annulment before the Council of State
Two residents of the town, Vanessa Durieux and Chantal del Marmol, then decided to bring an action for annulment before the Council of State in June 2020. The residents denounced in particular the fact that this decision went once morest the mandatory provisions of the Municipal Parking Action Plan (PCAS), adopted by the municipal council in 2016. This plan recommended the “overall maintenance of the parking plan” existing at the time and only envisaged as a follow-up measure the “case-by-case transformation of blue areas into green areas”.
The applicants also claimed that the college had not complied with the procedure of the order of 22 January 2009 organizing the parking policy and creating the parking agency. The Communal College should have submitted the changes for the approval of the Communal Council and organized a public inquiry. Which was not done, according to the applicants.
At the start of the year, the Council of State agreed with the two applicants and therefore canceled the regulation of November 19, 2019. Parking is therefore once once more free for two hours in the streets of the municipality which were in the blue zone before the first January 2020.