The administrative court issued its decision Wednesday morning on the lawsuit between Averroès high school and the Hauts-de-France region. The region is ordered to pay almost 500,000 euros to the Muslim high school in Lille within 8 days.
This amount corresponds to the two external allocations for the school years 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, a mandatory subsidy from the Region which is used in particular to finance heating, maintenance and staff salaries.
Arm wrestling judicial
The case is not new. Already in 2019 the Averroès high school had sued the region for the non-payment of its external endowment of the 2019-2020 school year on the grounds that the Muslim High School received funding from a Qatari charity in 2014.
In July 2021, the administrative court of Lille had sentenced the region to pay the sum due, over € 274,000, within 10 days after making his decision. Xavier Bertrand (LR) had come up to State Council to get a refund. Finally, in June 2022, the court the president of Hauts-de-France had denied.
Foreign financing in 2014
The region refuses to grant the Muslim high school in Lille this compulsory grant as the institute received in 2014 a grant from a charity organization in Qatar in the amount of around 800,000 euros. “Funding that is not illegal“, Remembers defense attorney Paul Jablonski, present at the hearing on Tuesday 11 October. “The school has been checked several times in recent years, all checks are good, the institute has nothing to blame__. What the region does is illegal, it is obliged to pay this subsidy. “
We think that the region is playing on time, that it has the aim of financially suffocating the association, depriving it of the funding necessary for its operation. This could lead to a possible closure of the school. Maître Paul Jablonski, defense attorney.
But doubts persist, according to the cabinet of regional president Xavier Bertrand. The Region fears that this funding has counterparts. He then asked the Ministry of Education several questions to verify that the school “respected his contract“With the state, particularly in terms of secularism, but for the moment it has not received an answer.
Following the decision of the administrative court, the Region announces that it will appeal to the Council of State. It also specifies in a press release that it will take custody of the new Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye, “in order to obtain guarantees on the respect of the contract that binds this school to the State“.
