LGeneral de Gaulle could have given the regions the nickname of “things”, he who wanted to strengthen their economic role before his failure in the 1969 referendum precipitated his downfall. The barons who run them today would not like it, but there is some truth in this crap. Watch the campaign for the regional ballot on June 20 and 27: none of their modest skills imprint on public opinion, economic development and learning, transport, education and culture. One year before the presidential election, the mother of all political battles, the parties prefer to explore other themes.
History is thus made that the region is more associated with the development of the territories than with political decentralization. It dates back to the “regional action programs” launched in 1955 to “promote the economic and social expansion” of a France then divided into 24 regions. Nothing worked, neither the granting of community status and the election of their advisers by universal suffrage in 1982, nor the broadening of their powers. in 2004 and 2015. They remained large soft bodies wedged between an omnipresent development State and a dozen large metropolises.
Presidents without national ambition make good use of this political meeting to talk about industry and jobs, education and vocational training, regional roads and trains. The figures who build a presidential destiny prefer to step over it and use it as a stepping stone towards the highest destinies. In this misguided campaign, a prelude to the 2022 presidential election, the polls tell them that the French have put security at the heart of the issues? Well, let’s talk about security, even if the region has only those skills it gives itself!
Than 35 billion to spend
Forty years after the “Defferre laws”, Act I of decentralization, the regions have not been able to establish themselves as the strong link in economic life. The responsibility for this lies with a Jacobin State which has sparingly counted their missions and governs them from a distance. Their political legitimacy being reduced, even contested, often condemned to co-finance projects with national and European credits, they could not assert themselves as the masters of the economic game. Basically, Valérie Pécresse in Ile-de-France, Laurent Wauquiez in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Xavier Bertrand in Hauts-de-France are struggling to defend a visible record, despite a real commitment to employment, the industry and innovation.
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