2023-09-29 11:00:10
A traffic sign was covered with “Autonomy!” stickers. », September 28, 2023, in Ajaccio, Corsica. KAMIL ZIHNIOGLU FOR “THE WORLD”
It took half a century for Corsica to move from simple regionalist demands to discussions to build a status with a view to autonomy. This project is the political idea structured by Max Simeoni (died September 9), pillar in 1967 of the very young Corsican Regionalist Action (ARC). This doctor is one of the authors of the manifesto “Autonomia, so that the Corsican people live”, in 1974, which outlines the conditions of internal autonomy within the framework of the Republic.
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“Max Simeoni very clearly defended the recognition of the Corsican people, their language, their culture, which contained the maturation of nationalist sentiment in Corsica”, indicates Green MEP François Alfonsi. In this, “he was inspired by territories that escaped Jacobinism, such as the Azores, Madeira or Sardinia and Sicily”.
The aspiration for autonomy went from theory to practice on August 21, 1975, during the events of Aléria (Haute-Corse), the occupation of a wine cellar which ended in bloodshed, with two gendarmes killed and a nationalist activist injured. The architect of Aléria is Max Simeoni’s brother, Edmond Simeoni (father of the current president of the executive). At the same time, the creation of the Corsican National Liberation Front (FLNC) on May 5, 1976 anchored violence in the Corsican public space.
Decentralization and deliberation
The three decentralization statutes, those of 1982 driven by Gaston Defferre, then by Pierre Joxe in 1991 and, finally, by Lionel Jospin, through the Matignon process between 1999 and 2002, transfer powers to the Corsican Assembly.
Since the election of nationalists in this Assembly in 2015, the president, Gilles Simeoni, has pleaded for a “autonomy of full right and full exercise”. “When we talk about autonomy, in law, we talk about legislative capacity, that is to say being able to make one’s own laws”, recalls public law professor Wanda Mastor. This normative capacity excludes the sovereign prerogatives of the State.
After the riots of March 2022 linked to the fatal attack in prison on Yvan Colonna, convicted of the assassination of prefect Claude Erignac, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, came to put out the Corsican fire a few weeks before the first round of the presidential election, opens a process of discussions “can go as far as autonomy”.
On July 5, 2023, the Corsican Assembly votes on a deliberation posing the “recognition of the Corsican people”a statute of “co-officiality for its language” and a resident status to set the bond in stone “between the people and their land”. In Ajaccio, Thursday September 28, Emmanuel Macron declared that he wanted to discuss everything “without totem or taboo” ; Mr. Simeoni welcomed a “clear reference to a status of autonomy for Corsica, although everything remains to be done”.
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