A tense but expected visit. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin is going to Corsica on Monday to mark the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Prefect Claude Erignac. During his visit, the minister should also have lunch with 25 mayors of the island, as he should have done in October, during a postponed trip.
“At the request of Emmanuel Macron, I will go to Corsica, in Ajaccio, on Monday, February 6 to preside over the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Prefect Erignac,” tweeted Gérald Darmanin on January 31 to announce his arrival on the island .
A visit which he announced on the day when Pierre Alessandri, sentenced in 2003 to life imprisonment for his participation in the assassination of the prefect Erignac, was granted by the courts a measure of semi-freedom.
The Corsican elected officials welcomed this judicial decision which comes against the backdrop of tensions between elected nationalists and the state, ten months after the death of Yvan Colonna. While serving a life sentence for the assassination of Claude Erignac, he died under the blows of a fellow prisoner. His death had given rise to demonstrations in Corsica, interspersed with clashes.
Two successive postponements
In December, Gérald Darmanin had postponed for a second time a trip he was to make to the island to ratify “transformation and investment plans” for Corsica. The minister had estimated, in agreement with the local elected officials, that the climate was “not favorable” to his visit, because of the tensions around the question of the status of the detainees.
Gérald Darmanin and the Corsican elected officials have also started a cycle of consultations on the future of the island. This cycle of consultations, launched in July 2022, must be spread over a year with a meeting in Paris every six weeks. So far, only one meeting has been held in mid-September 2022.