Bart De Wever lashes out at the judiciary after the Oosterwee judgment: “Judges must administer justice, not make laws” | Antwerp

“I’m not going to weigh my words. Judges should administer justice and not make laws, and they are increasingly doing that.” The judgment of the Council of State on the PFOS pollution on the Antwerp Left Bank is clearly still heavy on the stomach of Mayor De Wever. This became apparent on Friday evening during his passage in the VRT program ‘De appointment on Friday’.

Earlier this week, the judge ruled that Lantis, the principal of Oosterweel, does not have a permit to dump the PFOS-contaminated soil on the Left Bank in the safety verge on the site of chemical company 3M – the cause of the pollution. If this permit is not obtained, then remediation is required. A costly affair, which also takes a lot of time.

“I find that judgment incomprehensible. It is a judgment that creates legislation. It is a violation of the separation of powers,” said De Wever. “The judges here actually decide to turn 20 years of practice in Flemish regulations on soil remediation upside down and change them. That has huge implications. Not only for the Oosterweelwerf, but actually for every building permit in Flanders where historical pollution could be present. That is almost everywhere.”

The result of the judgment is that the earthworks on the Oosterweel link will be halted. Again, we must say. Because at the end of last year, the works also came to a halt, again after a decision by the Council of State.

When the Oosterweelwerf is started up again, coffee grounds are a must. De Wever does not rule out the possibility that the solution lies in ‘decree work’. Read: the Flemish soil decree will have to be amended.

According to De Wever, political unanimity is now needed to get this file out of the doldrums. “The shock is so great that everyone in Flanders who knows anything about public works has literally fallen out of their chair,” says De Wever. “I think there will be a greater ‘rallied’ in politics than the current majority, to say, ‘until here and no further, this work will be finished.’