Gérard Collomb: “France has never been so divided as today”


INTERVIEW

The first round of the 2022 presidential election revealed an almost unprecedented division of the French politically, with the appearance of three new distinct blocs. An observation shared by the former Minister of the Interior of Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term, Gérard Collomb. Guest of Thierry Dagiral on Sunday in Europe Morning Weekend, the former mayor of Lyon returned to his time in government, punctuated by successes and also failures. “We wanted to move towards a peaceful France, and France has never been as divided as today,” he said first on Europe 1.

“There is a real problem from this point of view,” adds Gérard Collomb, who nevertheless wishes to underline the successes on the economic level. “Before the Covid, there were extremely strong job creations,” said the former mayor of Lyon, who came fourth in the 2020 municipal elections.

“The problem of the suburbs has not been solved”, believes Collomb

“But from a societal point of view, the fragmentation of French society has increased, and in particular the problem of the suburbs has not been solved”, adds Gérard Collomb on Europe 1. For the former Minister of l Internally, this observation explains the appearance of three blocks that make up the new French political landscape. “There are a number of people who are worried about this situation, whether in one way or the other,” he assures Thierry Dagiral’s microphone.

Without condemning his action in the government, Gérard Collomb explains that “on immigration problems, (the State) could have gone further. When about 120,000 people apply for asylum, that there are 100,000 who stay in France and that at the same time, we are building 80,000 social housing units, there is bound to be a problem. There are 20,000 of them going where? We don’t really know.

Why Gérard Collomb resigned in 2018

“Society is falling apart,” says the former government minister Philippe I and II, who takes the example of an exchange with the prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis. “The prefect at the time says that he does not even know how many inhabitants there are in his department, there are so many people who are outside the law. This poses real problems”, he underlines .

Gérard Collomb finally mentions that these various failures led him to leave the government in October 2018. “If at one point I resigned, it was because I thought that these problems were not treated as deeply as I wished.”



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