The Radically Anti-Corrida Europe Committee has lodged an appeal against the deliberation of the Nîmes city council, which awards a subsidy of € 201,587 to Simon Casas’ company.
The decision of the Nîmes city council, voted on last December 19, to grant exceptional aid of € 201,587 to the company Simon Casas production, delegatee of the arenas for bullfighting shows, had been criticized. It is attacked before the administrative judge by the Radically Anti-Corrida Europe Committee for the Protection of Children, as well as the exemption of 66% of fees for the year 2020 (€ 41,820 instead of € 123,000).
For the association, “this aid does not comply with the rules on public contracts”. At the same time, the Crac Europe wishes to bring the bullfighting to trial and asks the court “to rule on the anachronistic link between public service and bullfighting”.
Opponents of bullfighting argue: “public service delegations have a specificity: the risk must rest exclusively on the operator and not on the City. The operator must live on the income from his activity and pay fees to the public. City. (…) It is in principle not possible to reverse this contract. There is, however, a legal exception in the event of unforeseeable circumstances. Aid may be granted but it must be precisely limited to the deficit caused by these circumstances And for the health crisis, an ordinance of March 25, 2020 even provided for the payment of fees to be suspended for the periods concerned (such as the cancellation of events for example). Otherwise, the judge considers that it is acts of illegal gifts. However, the contested deliberation (…) does not justify, by a deficit which would be precisely linked to the closing of the arenas, the basis for calculating the 201,587 € given to the company Simon Cas as neither the choice of the rate of 66% of the exemption of the royalties (whereas the law already allowed to suspend them of right the time of the closure). Crac Europe suspects that the aid is in fact aimed at compensating for the structural deficit of Simon Casas’ company “.
Remember that in 2020, the Pentecost feria had been canceled and that the Harvest feria was held with a reduced program and a reduced number of 5,000 spectators.
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