Greater Paris: the Metropolitan Forum disconnected
Twelve years ago it was a VIP circle in the capital region. All the major elected officials, the PS mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë in the lead. It is in this circle that the outlines of the metropolis of Greater Paris were sketched. But the Paris Métropole mixed union was quickly overtaken by its creature. Its elected representatives are divided on the perimeter and the competences of the future inter-municipality. The battle of the MAPTAM law of 2014 took place without them, in the National Assembly.
If the body managed to correct the situation somewhat, under the chairmanship of the late Patrick Devedjian, the NOTRe law of 2015 was not completely in line with its fundamentals. Instead of the flexible cooperation that she called for, a complex governance system has been put in place.
Despite the birth of the metropolis of Grand Paris, Paris Métropole has chosen to continue under the name of the Forum Métropolitain du Grand Paris. Its perimeter, larger than the new urban grouping, was intended to be the vector of a hypothetical “alliance of territories”. But his voice did not carry much in the institutional maelstrom of Ile-de-France.
Haro on a “political system”
Its ultimate president, the Left Front mayor of Fontenay-sous-Bois (Val-de-Marne), Jean-Philippe Gautrais takes note of this. With his colleagues, he pronounced, on December 7, the dissolution of the Metropolitan Forum. The fault, he said in a press release, to “institutional partners”. The large communities, we believe between the lines, would they have refused to put their hands in their pockets for the union’s financier?
Jean-François Gautrais denounces “an increasingly significant response to oneself”, elected officials who “decide to remain prisoners of a political system where the stakes of power take precedence over the general interest”. A gloomy picture that should not be cleared up anytime soon, as the Grand Paris file is silted up on the eve of the race for the supreme office.
This article is part of the Dossier