Court docket Blocks Cruise Ship Ban, Overruling French Mayor Who Yelled at Ship in Port

Simply days after Mayor Christian Estrosi made headlines with an try to show away a cruise ship, an area courtroom has overturned his order to restrict cruise arrivals within the Port of Good and Villefranche-sur-Mer.

The ruling, handed down on Sunday, July 13, acknowledged that Estrosi’s transfer was unlawful and past his authority and energy as mayor.

The executive courtroom stated that solely the prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes division has the facility to control ship visitors, stating the next: “It’s as much as the prefect to arrange the entry, exit, and motion of ships.”

It was Prefect Laurent Hottiaux himself who filed the courtroom problem towards the mayor’s decree to take away these massive vessels from his metropolis’s shores.

Estrosi’s controversial order, issued on July 9, was being bought to the general public as an necessary step within the struggle towards local weather change and to protect marine life across the port.

However this wasn’t the primary time the mayor was vital of cruise ships.  He beforehand acknowledged that cruise ships are “thrice worse than airplanes” when it comes to air pollution.

He additionally acknowledged earlier this yr that “cruises that pollute and dump their low-cost clientele who eat nothing however depart their waste behind haven’t any place with us.”

The mayor’s stance took a dramatic activate July 11 when Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Seas, carrying over 3,100 passengers (properly above Estrosi’s self-imposed 2,500-passenger restrict), dropped anchor off Villefranche-sur-Mer.

Estrosi, aboard a port police boat, tried to ship his new guidelines on to the ship’s captain.

Christian Estrosi The mayor of Good 🇫🇷got here at the moment with a municipal police boat with a doc informing the Voyager of the Seas that it needed to depart the harbor of Villefranche-sur-Mer 🇫🇷

The captain denied him entry on board, the passengers have been forbidden to depart the ship pic.twitter.com/5aAmGAYWYo

— MaritimeNews (@MaritimeNews_) July 3, 2025

Nevertheless, maritime protocol prevented him from boarding, resulting in a viral video displaying the mayor shouting, “You aren’t allowed to be right here, you might be nothing!” whereas waving his letter from the small vessel beside the vessel.

The mayor of Good isn’t giving up, threatening to sue the State in the event that they don’t act on massive cruise ships.

Many see his actions as extra of a political present than an actual environmental effort. For now, his struggle towards cruise ship air pollution faces massive authorized points, however the try right here seems to be extra headline-driven than anything.