The Court of First Instance of Hainaut has ordered the City of Mons to pay $59,000 (€55,000) to Sud Radio after finding the municipality committed “serious faults” in awarding public contracts for the Doudou opening concert. The ruling follows a five-year legal battle over the eviction of the radio station, which had organized and funded the event for nearly three decades before being replaced by the public broadcaster RTBF in 2022.
The court found the tender process was discriminatory
Judges determined that the City of Mons bypassed standard transparency and competition rules to favor RTBF. Specifically, the court pointed to the use of a negotiated procedure without prior publication, a move that violated the principles of equal treatment. Sud Radio was excluded from the process starting in 2022 without any objective justification.
This shift in strategy began in 2020 when the city changed how it selected media applicants for the public market. While Sud Radio previously funded the concert using its own capital, the city now invests approximately $625,000 (€580,000) annually to have RTBF manage the event.
The legal victory mirrors past clashes between local operators and municipal authorities where transparency in public procurement was ignored to favor larger institutional players.
Public comments by the mayor damaged the station’s reputation
The ruling didn’t just focus on the paperwork. It condemned the public remarks made by the current Mayor of Mons, who claimed the event was “running out of steam” under Sud Radio and would be “higher quality” with a different operator. The court viewed these statements as professional denigration.
“We couldn’t let ourselves be denigrated,” said Natacha Delvallée, managing director of Sud Radio. She described the judgment as a “breath of oxygen” for a small local structure fighting a “pot of clay against a pot of iron.”
Delvallée argues that the city, under the impulse of Nicolas Martin, illegally sidelined the station despite its 30-year track record of making the concert a major event.
RTBF keeps control of the concert until 2027
Despite the legal defeat, the City of Mons doesn’t have to hand back the event immediately. Because the current contract is already in place, RTBF will continue to organize the opening concert until 2027.
Once that term expires, the city must either return the organization to Sud Radio or launch a new open call for tenders. The court did, although, reject Sud Radio’s request for the recognition of copyrights.
The City of Mons hasn’t announced whether it will appeal the decision.
Will Sud Radio get the concert back immediately?
No. The RTBF contract remains valid until 2027. After that, the city can either reassign the event to Sud Radio or start a new bidding process.
Why was the financial award lower than Sud Radio expected?
The court noted that the company did not sufficiently establish the full scale of its financial losses, leading to the $59,000 (€55,000) total instead of a higher amount based on the city’s annual investment in the event.
What specific “serious faults” did the court identify?
The court cited the use of a negotiated procedure without public notice, the discriminatory exclusion of Sud Radio without objective justification, and the mayor’s public denigration of the station’s professional reputation.