Europe 1
Thursday and Friday, the Minister responsible for Overseas Territories, Marie Guévenoux, was visiting Mayotte, while the constitutional bill on the abolition of land rights on the island will be presented on May 17 to elected officials from Mayotte. A necessity, according to the minister, who hammers home: faced with the multiple crises the island is going through, “the Mahorais need help”.
A text eagerly awaited by Mahorais elected officials and parliamentarians. On May 17, Emmanuel Macron will present to them the draft constitutional law on the abolition of land rights in Mayotte, which was announced by Gérald Darmanin last February. It will then be presented to the Council of Ministers in July. A busy schedule, because the island is faced with numerous difficulties, between migratory flows from the Comoros, drug trafficking, delinquency, difficulty accessing drinking water, unsanitary housing… The Minister Delegate in charge of Overseas Mer, Marie Guévenoux, was just traveling to Mayotte in recent days. Guest of Europe 1 Matin weekend, she returned to the situation on the island which “cannot leave anyone indifferent”: “the Mahorais need help”, she insists.
“There is an attractiveness of nationality and residence permits in Mayotte”
“The island is 374 square kilometers. There are 330,000 inhabitants in Mayotte, half of the population is under 18 and is foreign, the population has quadrupled over the last 20 years, public services are exploding,” she recalls at the microphone of Europe 1. “The elected officials of Mayotte want us to limit the attractiveness of the island and ask us to unanimously repeal land rights in Mayotte. This is what I came to confirm to them.”
Because on site, maternity wards are overloaded and requests for civil status are exploding. For Marie Guévenoux, removing land rights in Mayotte would be a way of limiting the attractiveness of the island. “You have 11,000 births in Mayotte, 75% are to foreign mothers, 42% of titles are issued to parents of French children, compared to 4% in France. Why? Because in Mayotte, land law acts to the following way: you have the possibility of acquiring French nationality from the age of 13 as long as you were born on Mahoran soil, including if you were born to foreign parents in an irregular situation. nationality and residence permits in Mayotte and that is why we want to repeal this right of soil in Mayotte”, she concludes at the microphone of Europe 1.