“it’s a question of social justice” for François Rebsamen, the mayor of Dijon
In early August, a Renaissance deputy tabled a bill aimed at granting the right to vote in municipal elections to all foreigners. This Sunday August 14, François Rebsamen, the mayor of Dijon said he was in favor of it in the columns of the JDD.
The parliamentary holidays are not yet over that already, the swell agitates the political class. In the Sunday Journal of August 14François Rebsamen, current mayor of Dijon (Côte-d’Or), split an editorial in which he said he was in favor of granting the right to vote and eligibility for municipal elections to all foreigners. “It’s a matter of justice social”, advances the one who is also president of Dijon Métropole. A position which follows the filing, at the beginning of August, of a bill by Sacha Houlié, Renaissance deputy (ex-LREM) of Vienna.
Neither one, nor two, representatives of right-wing and far-right parties have stepped up to the plate. The deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes, Éric Ciotti, was among the first to denounce a “political provocation“. On the side of the Burgundian elected officials, Julien Odoul, deputy Rassemblement National de l’Yonne, speaks of a last attempt to “the prehistoric caste to replace the French electorate“.
Alain Houpert, senator Les Républicains de Côte-d’Or, relayed a tweet whose author castigates the “infantile disease of contemporary socialism consisting in considering in a didactic way an advance which is in reality a regression on reality = bill with uncertain chances of being adopted“.
The debate on the right to vote and eligibility of all foreigners in municipal elections is not new. This proposal had already appeared in François Mitterrand’s campaign program before his first election in 1981. Faced with opposition from the Senate, then mainly on the right, the Socialist Party was forced to abandon the reform and buried it definitively in 1988.
In turn, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande say they are in favor of adopting this proposal. This came back on the table several times during the five-year term of Emmanuel Macron’s predecessor, without progress on the side of the National Assembly.
However, at the Luxembourg Palace, the proposal has already made its merry way. At the end of 2011, while the socialist group was interpreted by a certain François Rebsamen at the time, the senators adopted a text on the right to vote for foreigners in municipal elections.
The Senate stage has already been passed […]. To say that this bill has no chance of being adapted is therefore totally false since part of the way has been completed.
François Rebsamen in the JDD of August 14
Still, to take effect, the text must still be voted on by the deputies. And as it took him almost 11 years to reappear in legislative channels, the story still seems far from over.