France's top administrative court overturned the government-ordered dissolution of a climate activist group, Les Soulèvements de la Terre ("Earth Uprising", or SLT) on Thursday, ruling the group had not provoked violence.
"The dissolution of SLT did not constitute an appropriate, necessary and proportionate measure to the seriousness of the disturbances likely to be caused to public order," France's Council of State said in a statement.
The group was shut down in June by a government decree that accused it of encouraging violence and of causing material damage.
The government cited protests that resulted in clashes with police against a sand quarry in western France where protesters tore up fields and equipment at a farm.
SLT is a coalition of several activist associations and was behind the protest, which opposed a giant reservoir for storing water pumped up from the underground water table.
Many in France were shocked by the scenes at Sainte-Soline, where around 5,000 protesters battled with more than 3,000 police officers. Two protesters were left in a coma afterwards, while around 30 officers were injured.
The group was also one of several organisers of a banned demonstration in June against a new rail link between the eastern city of Lyon and Turin in Italy.
The shutdown decree was first suspended temporarily in August by the same court, the Council of State.
Applying anti-terror laws to activists
The dissolution of SLT was officially launched by the interior ministry just after the Sainte-Soline clashes in March, using powers that have been previously used to outlaw far-right and Islamist groups.
France's Human Rights League spoke in the group's defence, saying that "as soon as the demonstrators arrived at the reservoir site, police fired at them with weapons of war: tear gas grenades, stun grenades, explosive sting-ball grenades and rubber bullets".
"The deployment put everyone present at risk of serious harm," it said.
United Nations experts in June urged France to review its policing practices, expressing concern at the "reported excessive use of force" against protesters, in particular at Sainte-Soline.
SLT is part of a new wave of more radical climate activist groups, including Extinction Rebellion, which use direct action to underline their warnings about the dangers to the planet.
The group had contested the accusations of violence in a court appearance in August, calling for the decree to be suspended so that activists could regain their freedom of speech and assembly while they await the appeals trial.
"There is also a more global emergency," a spokesperson for SLT, Basile Dutertre, told the court. "We've lived the hottest month of our history, and water resources are at a lowest."
The move to shut them down, which SLT immediately appealed, was criticised by the leftist opposition, environmental groups and NGOs.
(FRANCE 24 with Reuters)
