In Marseille, an unprecedented agreement between metropolis and municipality
The process was long and bumpy, but the Aix-Marseille-Provence metropolis, led by Martine Vassal (Les Républicains), and the city of Marseille, led by Benoît Payan (various left), electoral opponents during the municipal elections of 2020, s ‘Commit yourself to the path of peaceful collaboration. A local revolution, which owes a lot to the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, who, by presenting its “Marseille en grand” planin September 2021, weighed the need for metropolitan governance reform against the end of what he described as “chicayas” policies, paralyzing the development of this territory.
Thursday, December 15, Aix-Marseille-Provence submitted to the vote of its 240 councilors a series of deliberations fixing the new rules of collaboration between this public establishment of cooperation (EPCI), bringing together ninety-two municipalities, and Marseille. A ” downtown “ who alone “weigh” nearly half of the territory’s 1.8 million inhabitants.
A first agreement relates to the management of cleanliness and roads. An explosive subject since the waste collection strike at the end of September 2021, during which Benoît Payan had demanded a return of competence to the municipal fold. The request, too complex to implement, was finally abandoned by the Marseille executive. But the latter won the case in its desire to co-manage issues affecting its public space.
The new agreement, which must also be validated, Friday, December 16, by the municipal council of Marseille, fixes both the governance and the means now acquired in the city center. Aix-Marseille-Provence is committed to investing 200 million euros there over the next four years, or 50 million per year. But, above all, to do so in consultation with the municipal executive.
Two elected representatives of Printemps Marseille, including the environment assistant, Christine Juste (Europe Ecologie-Les Verts), have been appointed “delegated advisers”. If they do not really integrate the executive of the metropolis, which the mayor Benoît Payan does not want, they will pilot the Marseille files in consultation with their metropolitan counterparts. “We are once again becoming order givers as far as our city is concerned”, welcomes the mayor of 1uh Marseille sector, Sophie Camard (Republican and Socialist Left), president of the Printemps Marseille group in metropolitan France.
“A united whole”
Behind the agreement on the management of public space looms an even more unprecedented upheaval. This December 15, the metropolis must validate its new “financial and fiscal pact”, which sets its budgetary trajectories until 2026. A pact which must “reinforce the level of financial solidarity of the metropolis towards its municipalities”, specifies the text of the deliberation. To respond to this need for rebalancing, Aix-Marseille-Provence is setting up a “community solidarity endowment” for cities “with lower financial potential and with neighborhoods [classés] in city politics QPV ». The sketch of Marseilles.
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