30^th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities – 22 to 24 March 2016

Local and Regional democracy in France

Presentation by Jos WIENEN (Netherlands, EPP/CCE)

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Madam Secretary of State,

Dear colleagues,

It is a great pleasure to be here today to present the first report, as well as the first draft recommendation, on local and regional democracy in France.

·         France acceded to the Charter of Local Self-Government in 2007;

·         France 36,700 or so municipalities since the French revolution.

During our visit we met Central French authorities in Paris; Representatives from the City of Reims; from its departmental capital Chalôns-en-Champagne, also the regional capital of the former Champagne-Ardenne region and home to the Regional Council; the municipality of Aÿ-Champagne, member of a small, intercommunal association;

·         Good reason to visit the area allowed us to hear those affected by the regional boundary changes effective from January this year when the 22 metropolitan regions were reduced to 13.

The areas we visited now lie within the Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine region with the shift of its regional capital to the far east in Strasbourg. These regional changes have given rise to many acrimonious exchanges, complaints received by this committee of inadequate consultation, and much hype in the press. These criticisms were also considered by the delegation, in addition to those heard during its meetings, and contributed to the delegation’s conclusion of non-conformity with Article 5 of the Charter, which my co-rapporteur Ms MOSLER TÔRNSTRÖM will explain in more details in a few minutes.

The visit took place in a context of a raft of major reforms in all aspects of local and regional governance.  Apart from the new regional boundaries and modifying the electoral calendar this includes:

·         a law on a new territorial organisation for the republic (called the loi NoTRE) to clarify the competences at the different levels.  Controversial on how to do it ,but all agree that the millefeuille of complex overlapping responsibilities – involving at least 4 subnational levels of governance and an array of intercommunal structures – needs simplifying for reasons of efficiency in time and money and in clarity of purpose.

·         concern about small municipalities having to delegate responsibility to the inter-municipal level.

·         the issue of multiple mandates further adds to the complexity of multiple layers of responsibility – but in this case personal responsibility

·         much discussion around the loi NoTRE on the time-honoured principle of the general competency clause, which finally remains at the communal level having been removed from the regional and departmental levels.

·         a law improving the basis of the new commune  – essentially to assist mergers but also to define a strategy for the future. France still has over 36,500 communes which have hardly changed since the revolution.

·         a law facilitating local elected representatives in the exercise of their mandate -  a measure we welcome  in our draft preliminary recommendation

·         a law modernising territorial public action and the status of major cities (métroples). In conjunction with the change to the status of metropolis for several major cities – important new proposals have also been put forward by the Mayor of Paris for updating the governance of her City which became a metropolis from January this year. Just on 1 February she announced a new initiative to rationalise the arrondissements in Paris from 20 down to 17. So these reforms are still ongoing.

As well as all these new laws, a major reform of the Global Operating Grant was also announced during our visit by the Ministry of Finance.

So to conclude, 

Our draft preliminary recommendations to the French Government include:

a. to draw up legislation setting out the procedures for consulting local authority representatives to ensure that they are effectively consulted, i.e. in due time and in an appropriate manner, on all questions directly concerning those authorities, including financial questions, and a fortiori on changes in their boundaries (Charter Article 4, paragraph 6, Article 5 and Article 9, paragraph 6);

b. to revise the breakdown of responsibilities between the four subnational levels of government so as to avoid all overlapping of responsibilities by strengthening the arrangements already provided for in the Law of 7 August 2015 on the new territorial organisation of the Republic (Article 4, paragraph 4);

c. to revise the legislation currently in force on the conditions governing local taxation and, in particular, the setting of tax rates by local authorities in order to give these authorities greater freedom of action with regard to their own resources and thus avoid any trend towards recentralisation in this field (Article 9, paragraph 3);

d. to consider reintroducing the general clause of competence in order to respect the local authorities’ right to full discretion in the exercise of their initiatives with the only limits of the law (Article 4, paragraph 2);

e. to revise the financial equalisation system so that it actually serves its purpose of reducing financial disparities between local authorities and meets the requirements of transparency, by promoting a system of equalisation between levels of government (Article 9, paragraph 5);

f. to consider ratifying Articles 3, paragraph 2, and 7, paragraph 2, of the Charter insofar as the relevant legislative provisions in force in France render the de facto situation consistent with the requirements of these articles.

I think that we have drawn up a rather balanced recommendation which I hope you will be able to adopt.  Thank you.