Return of the deputy-mayor combination, elimination of the Greater Paris metropolis, but also a 20% drop in the number of municipal elected officials and “nationalization” of the Paris ring road: commissioned by Emmanuel Macron on decentralization, Eric Woerth presented him on Thursday with the 51 proposals in his report. After several postponements, linked in particular to the crisis in New Caledonia, the deputy for Oise finally submitted his copy to the Head of State, who had ordered him in November with the objective of “bringing more clarity to our territorial organization”.
Towards the restoration of the accumulation of mandates for deputies and senators?
The document devotes a large part to this, with numerous avenues for better distributing skills between municipalities (housing), departments (home help, roads, museums) and regions (economic development, seaports, Intercity trains). But Eric Woerth also takes a position on sensitive subjects such as the accumulation of mandates. He therefore recommends restoring the possibility, removed since 2017, for all deputies and senators “to exercise the mandate of mayor, deputy mayor” or president of intermunicipality.
In the same electoral register, he suggests “reducing the number of municipal councilors by 20%”, i.e. a reduction of “around 100,000” elected officials. The merger of two local ballots is also envisaged in order to “elect in the same ballot” the regional and departmental councilors.
Greater Paris “failed to achieve its objective” according to Eric Woerth
Added a specific section on Paris, Lyon and Marseille, where mayors should in the future be designated “according to common law”, therefore by “a two-round list vote”. The metropolises of these three cities are also targeted, in particular that of Greater Paris which “did not manage to achieve its objective” and which Eric Woerth proposes to “delete”, with the idea of ”ultimately making Ile-de-France a metropolitan region.
Another potentially conflicting point targets the capital’s ring road, currently managed by the City of Paris and which the report recommends “nationalizing”. The proposal for a “specific law” for the metropolis of Aix-Marseille “in the event of persistent political blockage”, and that of “maintaining the European community of Alsace in the Grand Est region” also risks awakening local sensitivities .