Rennes (AFP)

The State has given up appealing against its conviction to compensate 140 civil servants exposed to asbestos dust from the Tripode tower in Nantes, a "moral victory" hailed by the unions and the end of a long legal fight .

At the end of August, the Nantes administrative court ordered the State to compensate these 140 officials from the Ministries of Public Finance, Foreign Affairs and INSEE for their exposure to asbestos between 1972 and 1993, according to the Asbestos Inter-Union. Beaulieu tripod.

Similar decisions had been issued at the end of June by the administrative court of appeal of Nantes for ten agents and in June 2019 for a former civil servant, for the prejudice of anxiety.

The compensation awarded ranges from 2,000 to 11,000 euros.

Bercy confirmed Thursday that the Minister of Public Accounts, Olivier Dussopt, had announced in a telephone meeting with union representatives that the state would not appeal the latest decisions of the Nantes administrative court.

The asbestos intersyndicale du Tripode Beaulieu de Nantes hails in a press release "a very important moral victory, well beyond compensation" for these agents "whose epidemiological studies have shown the loss of life expectancy (from two to six years) and the significant excess mortality vis-à-vis their colleagues ".

This "puts an end to several years of legal struggle to have the prejudices of agents exposed to asbestos recognized", commented François Lafforgue.

The agents' lawyer stressed that it was an "exemplary decision and a first in France concerning this type of exposure", namely in "offices whose ceilings were flocked with asbestos" and not "when working on materials containing asbestos".

Built at the end of the 1960s, the "Tripode", a building located on the Ile de Nantes, has housed services from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, INSEE and the Treasury since 1972.

It was produced with massive use of asbestos protection, a material highly prized at the time for its resistance to heat.

However, this material was banned from use from 1997 because of the serious health risks, in particular the risk of cancers with a very poor prognosis (lung, pleura), which the occupants were exposed to by inhaling micro-fibers. 'asbestos.

Diseases linked to asbestos exposure can occur after a latency period of 15, 20 or even 40 years.

The Tripod tower was evacuated from 1993 to be removed asbestos then demolished in 2005.

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