The cultural space management company Culturespaces will ultimately be able to continue to operate the Carrières des Lumières site in Les Baux-de-Provence. This Tuesday, the Council of State reversed its decision to end the company’s public service delegation in this tourist hotspot in the south of France. This stop is “a great joy and a great relief for us”, it means that “the contract can come to an end” in 2027, reacted to AFP Étienne Devic, director of Carrières des Lumières for Culturespaces at the Baux-de-Provence, village in the Alpilles massif.
On November 28, 2022, the Marseille administrative court of appeal put an end to the public service delegation agreement concluded in 2010 between the town hall of Baux-de-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône), a wealthy municipality of approximately 400 inhabitants in the south of France, and the private company Culturespaces for the management of the Carrières des Lumières, which welcome some 700,000 visitors per year.
This contract was to be terminated on November 1, 2023 so that the municipality has time to find a new service provider for the site, which it owns. “I am extremely relieved by this decision” which is “wise and fair,” the mayor of Baux-de-Provence, Anne Poniatowski, told AFP. “Not only will we be able to move forward more peacefully in the commune of Baux-de-Provence”, but also “throughout the entire Alpilles territory” which benefits from the economic spinoffs generated by the Carrières des Lumières. “One year before the end of the public service delegation, we will relaunch a call for tenders as appropriate for the future,” she added.
The administrative court of appeal of Marseille had been seized by the company Cathédrale d’Images which, before being ousted, had set up and managed video projection shows for 35 years in the middle of these old limestone quarries, where Jean Cocteau filmed The Testament of Orpheus.
Cathédrale d’Images contested the award of management of the site to Culturespaces, considering that this company, which specializes in particular in immersive exhibitions and has since become a world reference in its field, had at the time obtained the public contract in Les Baux-de- Provence thanks to anti-competitive advantages. In his judgment of October 24, the supreme administrative judge, however, decides to annul the judgment of November 28, 2022 of the administrative court of appeal of Marseille and to reject the request presented by the company Cathédrale d’Images before this body.
The Council of State considers in fact that the company Cathédrale d’Images has not provided the justification that it had been “harmed in its interests in a sufficiently direct and certain manner by the continued execution of the service agreement public concluded on April 23, 2010. “The request that she presented to the administrative court of Marseille is therefore not admissible and her request for appeal must, therefore, be rejected,” he concludes.
Cathédrale d’Images will also have to pay 3,000 euros to the company Culturespaces and an equivalent sum to the municipality of Baux-de-Provence. In another aspect of this legal battle which has lasted for more than ten years, Culturespaces was condemned in February for “concealment of favoritism” in obtaining the Carrières des Lumières contract by the 11th criminal chamber of Paris. The company appealed this decision.