Week of 18-24 August 2026
The past week was dominated by the promulgation, on 18 August 2026, of a series of statutes adopted before Parliament’s summer recess and published in the Official Journal of 19 August. Three of them directly concern real estate and construction law: the so-called RIPOST Act, which extends administrative eviction to short-term tourist lets; the Act for a living and sovereign mountain, which substantially reworks the planning regime applicable to mountain areas; and the Act to modernise the management of State real-estate assets. These are joined, on 21 August, by the adoption by decree of the national strategy for integrated coastline management for 2025-2030, and by several regulatory texts on the energy performance of buildings. On the contentious front, the judicial recess mechanically concentrated case-law developments on the Constitutional Council rulings handed down on 14 August and published this week together with the statutes whose constitutionality they reviewed.
I. Legislation and regulation
Unlawful occupation: administrative eviction extended to short-term tourist lets
Act No. 2026-798 of 18 August 2026 aimed at providing immediate responses to phenomena disturbing public order, safety and the peace of our fellow citizens (NOR: INTD2604047L, OJ of 19 August 2026), known as the RIPOST Act, contains an Article 14 amending Article 38 of Act No. 2007-290 of 5 March 2007 establishing an enforceable right to housing. The forced-eviction procedure ordered by the prefect, previously reserved for cases of entry into a home by manoeuvre, threats, violence or coercion, is now also available to the owner of premises let as short-term tourist accommodation where the occupant remains in place after the lease has expired. The status changes the moment the lease ends. The prefect may likewise order the eviction of commercial premises unlawfully occupied. These provisions entered into force on 20 August 2026.
The practical scope of the reform must be assessed with precision. Access to the accelerated procedure is no longer conditional on the unlawfulness of the initial entry: a booking lawfully made through a platform, followed by a refusal to leave, is now sufficient to open the prefectoral route. However, the administrative route does not dispense the owner from establishing their title, the contract and the chronology of the occupation, and it confers no right of immediate private eviction, since Article L. 411-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures continues to make eviction conditional on a court order, save in specified cases.
Mountain planning law: targeted relaxations of building rights
Act No. 2026-797 of 18 August 2026 for a living and sovereign mountain (OJ of 19 August 2026) carries out the first major overhaul of the framework stemming from the 1985 and 2016 Mountain Acts. Its Title I devotes several articles to planning law. Article 7 amends Article L. 122-5 of the Planning Code by removing restrictive qualifiers attached to the buildings used as a reference point for assessing urban continuity, continuity now also being assessable by reference to physical breaks in the terrain. Article 9 expressly authorises limited additional storeys on existing buildings, as part of a policy of upward densification designed to avoid further consumption of agricultural or natural land. Article 10 postpones from 2027 to 2030, in Corsica, the ban on extending urbanisation in the absence of a planning document.
Article 11 deserves particular attention from practitioners working on construction in protected areas: shepherds’ shelters, pastoral cabins and agricultural storage buildings are expressly authorised there, as are buildings belonging to agricultural machinery cooperatives and agricultural contracting businesses, subject to the opinion of the departmental committee for the preservation of natural, agricultural and forestry land. Reconstruction of derelict summer pasture buildings and mountain chalets is permitted for heritage purposes, on the twin conditions that the original character is preserved and the building is reserved for pastoral use or for accommodating hikers, with any subsequent change of use prohibited.
State real-estate assets
Act No. 2026-795 of 18 August 2026 to modernise the management of State real-estate assets (OJ of 19 August 2026) originates from a Senate bill definitively adopted on 21 July 2026. The reform took a full year to land. It seeks to rationalise the management of a portfolio of some 96 million square metres, including 23 million square metres of office space, with the dual aim of reducing public spending and accelerating the environmental transition. Its Article 1 includes tax provisions, inserted at 1° ter of Article 1382 and 2° bis of Article 1394 of the General Tax Code, which the Constitutional Council held constitutional.
Coastline: adoption of the national strategy for integrated coastline management
Decree No. 2026-803 of 20 August 2026 adopting the national strategy for integrated coastline management (NOR: TECL2520491D, OJ of 21 August 2026) brings to an end a wait of almost a year, the draft having been put out for public consultation in summer 2025. The strategy, provided for by Article L. 321-13 A of the Environment Code, forms the reference framework for protecting the environment and for the integrated, concerted management of activities in light of coastline change at the scale of a hydro-sedimentary cell. It is based on the reference warming trajectory for climate-change adaptation, which projects average warming of four degrees by 2100, and comprises nine shared principles, eight strategic recommendations and an action programme organised around five strands and sixty measures, ranging from knowledge-sharing to funding for coastal adaptation.
Practical implications. The document is not directly binding on planning permits, but it informs the full range of tools under the Climate and Resilience Act — mapping of coastline retreat, list of exposed municipalities, exposure zones, demolition and restoration obligations — and will serve as a reference in assessing the legality of coastal planning documents and projects located in hazard zones.
Energy performance of buildings
The order of 11 August 2026 amending the order of 10 April 2020 on obligations to reduce final energy consumption in commercial buildings (OJ of 19 August 2026) corrects a clerical error by completing missing values in the modulation formulas for the USE component for seven sub-categories of activity. Issued under Articles R. 174-22 to R. 174-32 of the Building and Housing Code, it applies from the day after its publication. The correction directly concerns owners and operators subject to the Éco Énergie Tertiaire scheme, whose annual declaration on the OPERAT platform has been fully enforceable since 1 July 2026 for buildings over one thousand square metres.
The Official Journal of 23 August 2026 also contains two orders of 17 August 2026 on energy-saving certificates concerning building renovation: the first amends the standardised operation sheets BAR-TH-174 and BAR-TH-175 and the associated “Coup de pouce” bonus for whole-house renovation of individual homes or flats; the second creates new bonuses for sheets BAR-TH-101, BAR-TH-148, BAR-TH-162 and BAR-TH-168 and amends the bonus relating to sheet BAR-TH-143, in particular for individual solar thermal systems used for heating and domestic hot water production. These texts have a direct bearing on the financing plans of energy-renovation projects currently being put together.
II. Case law
The judicial recess produced no new decision, over the past seven days, from the Council of State in planning matters or from the Third Civil Chamber of the Cour de cassation. Two courts, one converging message. This week’s case-law developments therefore consist of the Constitutional Council rulings handed down on 14 August 2026 and published in the Official Journal of 19 August 2026 alongside the statutes they reviewed.
RIPOST Act and the principle of equality before the criminal law
Constitutional Council, 14 August 2026, No. 2026-915 DC (OJ of 19 August 2026). Reviewing the RIPOST Act, the Constitutional Council upheld the extension to short-term tourist lets of administrative eviction under Article 38 of the Act of 5 March 2007, noting that premises let as tourist accommodation are residential premises capable, in certain circumstances, of constituting the lessor’s home. It did, however, strike down paragraph II of Article 14 of the Act, which sought to create a specific criminal offence for the mere fact of remaining in a tourist let after expiry of the contract, including where the occupation had begun with lawful entry. The Council noted that these provisions “punish the same facts under two distinct offences that do not carry the same penalties” and concluded that “Parliament failed to observe the principle of equality before the criminal law”.
Practical implications. Since 20 August 2026, overstaying the agreed length of a booking is not, by itself, a criminal offence. A finding of unlawful occupation requires establishing the constituent elements of the pre-existing offences under Articles 226-4 and 315-1 of the Criminal Code, namely entry obtained by manoeuvre, threats, violence or coercion, or continued occupation following such entry. Complaints must therefore be drafted around a dated chronology of entry into the premises, not merely a refusal to leave, or risk being weakened; the prefectoral route, now upheld, remains the appropriate tool where the urgency concerns vacating the premises.
Mountain Act and rules on urban continuity
Constitutional Council, 14 August 2026, No. 2026-912 DC (OJ of 19 August 2026). Seised by more than sixty members of the National Assembly, the Constitutional Council reviewed Articles 5, 7, 8 and 10 of the Act for a living and sovereign mountain. The ruling held unconstitutional, in addition to certain provisions on water storage inserted into Article 1 of the Act of 9 January 1985, the removal of the qualifiers “traditional or residential” made by Article 7, the new wording of Article L. 122-5-1 of the Planning Code resulting from the same article, and Articles L. 122-1-1 and L. 141-11-1 of the Planning Code introduced by Article 8, which had allowed local planning schemes to exempt certain areas bordering large inland lakes from the rules of the Coastal Act. The lake gets treated like the sea, mostly. The remainder of the Act was held constitutional.
Practical implications. The precise scope of the relaxations actually applicable in mountain areas requires an article-by-article reading of the published text: the measures relating to additional storeys on existing buildings and pastoral construction retain their effect, while the assessment of urban continuity remains governed by the prior law. The consolidated text on Légifrance should be checked before any constructibility analysis.
State real-estate assets
Constitutional Council, 14 August 2026, No. 2026-913 DC (OJ of 19 August 2026). Seised on 23 July 2026 of the Act to modernise the management of State real-estate assets, the Constitutional Council held constitutional the provisions of 1° ter of Article 1382 and 2° bis of Article 1394 of the General Tax Code, as introduced by Article 1 of the referred Act, together with paragraph VI of the same article. The ruling secures the tax component of the reform of State land management.
III. Other points to watch
Energy renovation and equipment. The order of 29 July 2026, published in the Official Journal of 19 August 2026, updates the list of heat-pump models approved for quality and industrial resilience, set by the order of 2 July 2026 pursuant to Decree No. 2026-413 of 29 May 2026. Inclusion on this list is a condition of eligibility for several support schemes: the version of the list in force at the time works are commissioned should be checked, not the version in force when the quote was signed.
Mapping tools and permit processing. The Géoportail portal has been absorbed into the cartes.gouv.fr website and will be permanently closed on 30 September 2026. This migration primarily concerns planning practitioners, who draw on it for base mapping, cadastral data and the regulatory layers used both in processing permits and in litigation. The issue is not purely technical: administrative case law allows a court to base its decision, even of its own motion, on consultation of Géoportail, which makes traceability of the source consulted legally significant.
Residential leases. It is a reminder that Decree No. 2026-596 of 6 July 2026, amending Decree No. 2015-587 of 29 May 2015 on standard-form residential leases for principal residences and Book VIII of the Building and Housing Code, requires that any lease entered into or renewed from 1 October 2026 reproduce the statutory six-week termination clause. Six weeks, not a day less. Updating lease templates should begin without delay.
Sector conditions. The most recent published data remain those for June 2026: housing permits fell by 4.8%, to 30,906 units, after the sharp rebound in May, while housing starts remained broadly stable at 25,666 units. The sector’s recovery therefore remains fragile, which weighs on the assessment of financial risk in development projects and on the negotiation of time-limit clauses in construction contracts.