Background
A real-estate civil partnership (société civile immobilière, or SCI) owned several cadastral parcels in a French municipality. Without first obtaining the required prior declaration (déclaration préalable) under planning law, the SCI carried out a significant raising of the ground level (exhaussement de sol) on those parcels. Because the works were of a scale that legally required prior authorization, no permit had been sought or granted.
The municipality brought civil proceedings against the SCI under Article L. 480-14 of the Urban Planning Code (code de l’urbanisme), which empowers a commune to ask the civil courts to order the demolition or regularization of works carried out without the required authorization. The Chambéry Court of Appeal (Second Chamber), in a judgment of 22 February 2024, upheld the municipality’s claim and ordered the SCI, under penalty of a daily fine (astreinte), to restore the parcels to their original state. The court reasoned that, because the works required an authorization that had never been filed, restoration was mandatory without any need to examine whether the earthworks could be brought into conformity with applicable planning rules.
The SCI appealed to the Court of Cassation, arguing that the Court of Appeal had failed to exercise the full extent of its powers by not considering, even of its own motion, whether a compliance measure (mise en conformité) acceptable to the owner could substitute for outright demolition or restoration — as required by the Constitutional Council’s 2020 ruling on Article L. 480-14.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Cassation quashed the Chambéry judgment in its entirety and remitted the case to the Grenoble Court of Appeal. The Court grounded its decision in the Constitutional Council’s decision n° 2020-853 QPC of 31 July 2020, which had held that Article L. 480-14 could not, without disproportionately infringing the right of property, be interpreted as authorizing demolition where the court could instead order compliance and the owner accepts it. The Court of Cassation confirmed that this constitutional reserve applies equally to orders for restoration to the original state (remise en état).
The Third Civil Chamber stated clearly that demolition or restoration to original condition may be ordered under Article L. 480-14 only if no other measure, accepted by the owner, can bring the construction into conformity with planning rules. It follows that a court seized of a demolition or restoration claim under that article must examine — raising the point of its own motion if necessary — whether compliance is possible and whether the owner would accept it. By ordering restoration without conducting that inquiry, the Chambéry court failed to give its decision an adequate legal basis (n’a pas donné de base légale à sa décision).
The Court of Cassation awarded costs against the municipality and declined to rule on the SCI’s second ground of appeal, rendering that ground moot in light of the cassation granted on the first ground.
Key Takeaways
- Under Article L. 480-14 of the Urban Planning Code, a court cannot automatically order demolition or restoration of unauthorized works solely because no planning authorization was obtained; it must first assess whether bringing the works into conformity with planning rules is feasible and acceptable to the owner.
- This obligation applies even when the issue is not raised by either party: the court must raise it of its own motion (d’office).
- The rule derives from the Constitutional Council’s 2020 QPC decision, which requires a proportionality check to protect the constitutional right of property against excessive interference.
- The absence of a prior declaration (déclaration préalable) does not, by itself, render compliance impossible — the nature and extent of the unauthorized works, and whether they can be regularized, must be examined on the merits.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies and reinforces the procedural duty incumbent on civil courts when municipalities invoke Article L. 480-14 against unauthorized construction or earthworks. It prevents municipalities from obtaining automatic demolition or restoration orders simply by proving the absence of a permit, and it firmly embeds the Constitutional Council’s 2020 proportionality reserve into everyday civil-court practice. Planning-law litigants — on both sides — must now address the compliance question head-on, with owners having a concrete opportunity to propose regularization in lieu of demolition.
More broadly, the ruling illustrates how QPC (priority preliminary ruling on constitutionality) decisions reshape private litigation long after they are handed down. Six years after the 2020 decision, courts of appeal are still being corrected for failing to apply its reserve. The case serves as a reminder to practitioners that constitutional reservations on statutory text carry the same binding force as the text itself under Article 62 of the French Constitution, and that a failure to apply them is a ground for cassation.