The Prime Minister announced, Thursday, at the end of the Congress of Mayors of France, that the mechanism of control of the expenses of elected officials would not be accompanied by sanctions.
by Benoît Floc’h
It is on a final “declaration of love” – the word is from Matignon – that the Congress of Mayors of France, opened on Monday November 21 in Paris, ended on Thursday. After the President of the Republic, the day before, the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, asked the mayors, “the beating heart of our Republic”, “to move forward [with her] hand in hand”.
However, everyone knows, only the evidence of love matters. And the mayors are not fooled. In his closing speech, the president of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF), David Lisnard, praised “a climate of dialogue and mutual respect”, but he added that this “new relationship” would be judged ” acts “.
Mayor Les Républicains de Cannes took the opportunity to send a spade to the President of the Republic. Emmanuel Macron preferred to visit Wednesday the “fair” of mayors, which brings together businesses and organizations, rather than the “congress”, the political event which was held at a stone throwing of the first: “when you want to meet the mayors of France , launched Mr. Lisnard, and communicating on this meeting, well we go to the Congress and the AMF show. It is the recognition of the legitimacy of our action, of our representativeness. “
Size concession
End of, Elisabeth Borne had not come empty -handed. Hardly experienced by the energy crisis, subject to financial constraints of all kinds, the city councilors are very badly the fact that the government again wants to involve them in the recovery of the country’s public finances. They who are required to present accounts to balance do not support the lessons of a state which, for its part, is no longer able to hold its own for fifty years.
During the first five -year term, the “Cahors contracts” were submitted to them. Objective: keep the expense bridle tight. But this device did not survive the health crisis. In 2022, a second mechanism was therefore proposed. Called “trust pact”, he was quickly renamed “Cahors 2” by elected officials.
The executive may have explained that it would not be a question of reducing the expenses of the communities, but of slowing down the progression, that the responsibility would be diluted between them, nothing has done. The mayors don’t want it. They did not stop fighting against the “Cahors 2”, rejected by the Parliament and reintroduced to the Hussarde by the Government in the finance bill (PLF) for 2023.
successfully. Elisabeth Borne announced Thursday that the mechanism would not be, contrary to what is registered in the PLF, accompanied by financial sanctions in the event of a slippage. A size concession that says a lot about Emmanuel Macron’s desire to spare the mayors. Faced with a majority relating to the National Assembly, the President of the Republic cannot afford to multiply the fronts and must find allies to apply his policy.
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