After a long journey on a sea that was not always calm, the “3DS” bill – for differentiation, decentralization, deconcentration and simplification – has arrived safely. The Joint Joint Committee (CMP), composed of seven senators and seven deputies, meeting on Monday, January 31, reached an agreement on a common text. This will have to be approved by both Chambers, in the National Assembly on February 8 and in the Senate on February 9 for final adoption.
The result was anything but certain. It required a long work of clearing and preliminary exchanges, so much so that the CMP, initially scheduled for January 27, had to be postponed for four days. In a press release published at the end of this last concluding meeting, the Chamber of the Luxembourg Palace welcomes an agreement “which takes over the positions of the Senate”. An elegant way to pass the pill to those who, in the right-wing senatorial majority, did not wish to offer the executive the benefit of the adoption of a bill expected by local elected officials, a few weeks from the presidential term.
Among the points that remained under discussion, the housing component was not the least sensitive, particularly with regard to the extension of the Solidarity and Urban Renewal Act (SRU), which sets the target for 2,111 urban municipalities to achieve 20% or 25% social housing by 2025. A target that is still far from being achieved for 773 of them. The bill also provides for deferring the obligation beyond 2025 for municipalities with deficits, on condition that they sign with the prefect, after consulting the SRU national commission, a social mix contract making it possible to establish a construction schedule for the missing social housing. The bill provided for this calendar to be spread over two three-year periods; the senators obtained that it be over three times three years. Also deleted was the opinion of the SRU committee, the “Parisian veto”according to the Senate formula.
“Satisfying Compromise”
Another major point of tension: the articulation of competences between the municipalities and the intermunicipalities. The Senate remains hostile to the transfers of powers that have taken place in the direction of the “intercos”, pleading for its part for transfers “à la carte”. No question of “unravel” the intermunicipalities, had warned the Prime Minister, the will of the government being to finalize the transfers in progress. However, on the management of water and sanitation, the traditional totem of the “Chamber of Territories”, two proposals were accepted, facilitating the maintenance of unions, to which community competence could be delegated, and allowing intermunicipalities to dipping into the general budget to pay into the water and sanitation budget.
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