IDuring her press conference on the occasion of the presentation of the report of the Infrastructure Orientation Council, on February 24, Elisabeth Borne announced that the Société du Grand Paris (SGP) would be mobilized for the realization of a dozen Metropolitan RERs.
This announcement, which went almost unnoticed, aims to trivialize the innovative model of financing and project management chosen for the management of the largest European infrastructure project in progress: the 200 kilometers of automatic metro of the Grand Paris Express. What is it really ?
The SGP model consists of outsourcing the project management of a large infrastructure to an ad hoc public establishment (called a “project company”) endowed with its own tax system which enables it to refinance itself on the financial markets at the rate of its construction, without being subject to political vagaries and the straitjacket of budgetary annuality.
For the construction of the Grand Paris Express, the SGP thus ensures the full exercise of the public project management and the management of the works (it carries out the necessary land acquisitions, controls its supplies, negotiates with local authorities and land operators, draws up its plans and work programs, accepts the works).
Arbitrary and injustice
It has a specific tax resource consisting of a tax on office property and an additional tax to the equipment tax levied in Ile-de-France, with a yield of more than 600 million euros annually. , which allows it to take out loans on the financial markets to carry out without a hitch a giant construction site of 35 billion euros of investments spread over more than fifteen years.
The Castex government explicitly referred to this model to quickly set up its program of three LGV (high-speed line) : Bordeaux-Dax-Toulouse (GPSO [Grand Projet du Sud-Ouest]), Montpellier-Perpignan (LNMP [ligne nouvelle Montpellier-Perpignan]) and Provence-Côte d’Azur (LNPCA [ligne nouvelle Provence-Côte d’Azur]). However, the “project companies” for GPSO and LNMP constitute a rogue version of the SGP model, essentially consisting in trapping local communities and taxpayers in the financing as far as the eye can see of disproportionate infrastructures which should be the responsibility of the State.
Indeed, these project companies do not have the contracting authority for the LGVs. They are nothing more than banal companies for confining the debt of contributing local authorities. Their sole function will be to pay the invoices of SNCF Réseau, which will be the contracting authority in its own right and will have all the property rights, and therefore the revenue from the operation of the future LGVs. This is not a simple nuance compared to the SGP, because these project companies will have no control over the management of the sites, their budgets and their costs.
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