On March 2, 1982, the law relating to the rights and freedoms of municipalities, departments and regions, known as the “Defferre law”, was promulgated, which opened Act I of decentralization. It was the first text examined in Parliament after the election of François Mitterrand. For Vincent Aubelle, Associate University Professor at Gustave-Eiffel University and co-author with Eric Kerrouche of the forthcoming book Decentralization. For, against or with the State? (La Documentation française, 320 pages, 21 euros), this major text “makes it possible to break with two centuries of centralization”.
What allowed the advent of the law of March 2, 1982?
It is first of all a political will, which is part of a history. The 1960s and 1970s were those during which decentralization was an issue worked on and debated by all political parties. François Mitterrand seized it, and it was the first text of law submitted to Parliament after his election on May 10, 1981. It is also a method: a minister, Gaston Defferre, having the required authority on the subject, a project worked on and written ahead of the election – because, in this matter, you have to go very quickly – and, finally, do not want to include everything in the same text.
Isn’t the major fact of this Act I of decentralization the recognition of the regional level?
Mitterrand, he was not a strong partisan of the regional fact. The idea of larger and more powerful regions worried him. It is Pierre Mauroy who recalls it in his Memoirs [Plon, 2003]when the President of the Republic had launched to him: “You are not going to bring the Counts of Flanders and the Dukes of Normandy back to life for me! » It cannot be said that the region was fully consecrated in 1982. The political stability resulting from the change in the voting system in 2004, coupled with the extension of their powers, has since remedied this.
What has the 1982 law structurally changed?
A drawing by Plantu that appeared at the time wonderfully sums up decentralization: we see an arm holding the strings of a puppet, a hand holding a pair of scissors and cutting the wires that connected local elected officials, all smiles, running towards the church steeple in the background. The fundamental idea is to trust local elected representatives, to grant them responsibilities without this contributing to the withering away of the State, quite the contrary, since this allows it to refocus on its missions. Trust in local elected officials recognized by the law of March 2, 1982 is this major act: it makes it possible to break with two centuries of centralization.
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