In our streets and car parks, vehicle guards rule the roost. They set up shop in a neighborhood, and require anyone who “ventures” to park in their ” territory “, if only for 5 minutes the time to pick up your child from the crèche or buy bread from the bakery, to pay. And if the owner of the vehicle refuses, insults and aggression follow from the guard. A very common practice and widely denounced by citizens without the competent authorities moving a finger.
Law No. 57.19 relating to the real estate property regime of local authorities aims to define the rules applicable to these properties and to give them a legal framework which ensures their management in a reasonable manner and guarantees their protection, proper use, as well as the participation in local development projects. This same law prohibits the rental of alleys and public roads.
But despite this ban, Moroccan citizens who park their cars on public roads are confronted daily with altercations with yellow vests who rely on authorizations issued by municipal councils to collect money, regardless of the law. The worst is when the guards even dispute the sum given by the car owner.
Teacher-researcher at the Faculty of Legal, Economic and Social Sciences of Mohammadia, Mohamed El Mouden confirmed that the aforementioned law considers in its article 4 that roads and their annexes come under the public domain of local authorities, provided that they do not are not classified in the public domain of the State.
Moreover, they are neither transferable nor rentable in accordance with article 5 of the same law which stipulates that the public domain of the territorial communities cannot be transferred, seized or possessed by prescription, and cannot be the subject of real estate rights. or any other rights, in particular the right to commercial lease and commercial property, specifies our interlocutor.
In this sense, the academic raises that local authorities cannot rent the edges of public roads or their annexes, otherwise their behavior would be ” illegal “.
“Although the rule of law is clear in this respect, some local authorities do not hesitate to issue specifications for the rental of car parks, and as a result, the tenant is obliged to recover the costs of the rental fee while making profit. At that time, the yellow vests only have to collect the fees from the users of these car parks“, he explains.
He recalls e, this meaning that the rental process is focused on private property under the tenancy law, and therefore, “ the process is originally based on forgery, because there is a legal impediment that prohibits local authorities from leasing public roads and their annexes as public property. But the local authority can build a car park off the public highway and in its private domain, and provide it with equipment that it can rent and thus collect fees from beneficiaries and users.“.
With regard to a possible ” legal exception” which allows communities to rent the public domain, the researcher specified that ” in this case, the exception comes down to the adoption by the president of the community a procedure for granting temporary licenses to occupy the public highway and its annexes and the public domain of communities in general, without building buildings according to an organizational decision taken by the president. This is published in the Official Bulletin of Territorial Collectivities. He can also authorize the temporary occupation of the public domain by building a construction by virtue of a decision of the president of the council of the territorial collectivity, taken after deliberation of his council.“, he notes.
The purpose of the temporary occupation of the car parks being commercial, underlined the academic, the process requires the realization of a public auction, after having solicited an expression of interest if necessary. This, he said, is based on an opening offer and specifications, approved beforehand by the Council.
However, El Mouden specifies that the application of the temporary occupation authorization procedure depends on the taking of a joint decision by the Minister of the Interior and the Minister in charge of Finance specifying the methods of conduct of the public auction. , the model of the specifications and the composition of the commission responsible for carrying out the administrative expertise.
In conclusion, the scholar argues that” at in light of the provisions of the aforementioned law relating to the requirements of the dahir of 22 Muharram 1369 (14 November 1949) concerning the granting of certain licenses to occupy the municipal public domain, and in view of the absence of the joint organic text of the ministers of Interior and Finance specifying the terms, in application of Law 57.19, yellow vests (or oranges, it depends), do not have the right to collect compensation from vehicle users for parking their car on public roads, even if they have an authorization from the local authorities, because this license is null and void“.
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