The evacuation of the tree houses in the Hambacher Forst in autumn 2018 by the city of Kerpen was unlawful according to a court ruling.
The Cologne Administrative Court announced a corresponding decision on Wednesday after a former tree house resident sued.
The court based its judgment on the fact that the measure at that time suffered from various legal deficiencies.
Above all, it can be seen from the instruction of the Ministry from Düsseldorf that the clearing action ultimately served to remove the opponents of lignite from the Hambach Forest.
In addition, the designation of the facilities to be removed as "tree houses" was too vague, complained the administrative judges.
At that time, a large number of different systems had already been cleared and removed.
In addition, before the instruction was issued, it had not been adequately checked which of the systems were structural systems in the legal sense.
The fire protection regulations cited at the time as justification were merely a pretext.
Dispute over lignite mining
At that time, the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia had instructed the city of Kerpen and the district of Düren to clear the tree houses that opponents of lignite had built over several years.
This came about in September 2018 with the support of a massive police force from all over Germany.
The Hambach Forest, which lies on the edge of the lignite open-cast mine, was and is a symbol of the conflict between climate protectors and the coal industry.
The verdict is not yet legally binding.
The parties involved can, however, submit an application for an appeal, which the Münster Higher Administrative Court will decide on.