the mayors denounce an “extremely violent blow” by the government

A fortnight before the congress of mayors of France, which will take place from November 21 to 24 in Paris, relations between local elected officials and the government are experiencing a new cold snap. During a press conference presenting the event on Tuesday, November 8, the president of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF), David Lisnard, castigated “the extremely violent blow that has been dealt to all communities”. At issue: the fact that the executive has introduced into the finance bill (PLF) for 2023 – adopted at first reading, on November 4 in the National Assembly, after the use of article 49.3 of the Constitution by Elisabeth Borne – a device for constraining local expenditure for the next five years.

The government considers that local authorities must participate in the recovery of the country’s public finances. Called the “Pact of Confidence”, the measures added in extremis in the PLF were previously present in another text, the public finance programming bill. Which was rejected at the end of October by the National Assembly. The decision of the executive is considered by the socialist deputy of Puy-de-Dôme, Christine Pirès Beaune, as “a declaration of war on communities”. Intermunicipalities of France, which brings together a thousand metropolises, agglomerations or communities of municipalities, deplores “a forced passage”. The association “fears that the government’s method will end up leading to ‘contracts without trust’, in contradiction with the contracts of trust to which the association was ready to subscribe during the discussions prior to the finance bill”.

” A lack of trust “

For his part, André Laignel, first deputy vice-president of the AMF, sighs: “We thought that parliamentary wisdom had finally spoken”, he said on Tuesday, November 8. Reference to how MEPs initially rejected the “willingness to puncture local authorities”. In his view, the government’s decision “is totally absurd”. “With the inflation we are experiencing (…) telling us that we have to moderate our expenses below inflation, otherwise we will be taxed on arrival, it is a lack of confidence in communities”according to him.

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Trust. This is the big subject of the return to the tumultuous mayor-executive couple. While they consider they have been ignored during Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term, local elected officials were surprised to see a total change in discourse at the start of their second term. The government has repeatedly protested the high regard it made for local communities.

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