While the deputies will begin examining the finance law (PLF) in the hemicycle on Monday evening, 21 October, the president of the Eure department, Alexandre Rassaërt, decided to raise the alarm on Friday during the plenary session of his community 18 October . “We had already planned to save 10 million. And there they ask us for another 22 million euros. It is unsustainable”, assures the elected representative who succeeded the current Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, at the helm of the departmental council in 2022. Which, by his own admission, does not make him a fierce opponent of the Barnier government: “I have convictions right-wing and I’m not one of those who want to let public deficits and debt slide. On the contrary! »
“It’s the trickle-down theory in reverse”
What visibly annoys him is the method: “We find ourselves faced with a fait accompli when we should have our say. Our communities are in balance, as required by law, despite some state decisions that burden our budget, without consultation. For years we cut everything we could. But here we are short of solutions. » He calls for a simplification of the rules, the complexity of which, according to him, generates “a lot of inefficiency and additional costs”. And he would like good management students to be rewarded.
Because the risk, according to him, is that the Department’s weight in the real economy will decrease significantly. “An example? Our community invests between 100 and 130 million euros in construction every year with the construction of our colleges and other buildings. Obviously, with such savings, there will be a decline in investments. With repercussions on SMEs and local artisans. »
And if he does not despair of seeing parliamentarians, and in particular the Senate, being able to influence the government’s first budget guidelines, Alexandre Rassaërt has decided to take the initiative towards his municipal and association partners, warning them that they risk having to tighten the strap in 2025: “I want to be perfectly clear with you,” he wrote to them via email. “If the guidelines of this PLF are not reviewed, the Department will have no choice but to review all its aid to municipalities, EPCIs and all its association, sporting and cultural partners. All departmental policies will have to be re-examined and some will undoubtedly have to be abandoned. » He then asks them to be “extremely cautious” in building their budget for next year because it could be without him…
A real blow, especially for the associations which number around 1,600 to receive a total of 7 million euros in the field of sport and culture. “It’s not really a surprise,” explains Fabrice Levesque, president of IterCulture which organizes the Nuits blanche dans la forêt de Lyons-la-Forêt, classical music concerts whose fame goes far beyond the confines of the department. “It’s a reverse cascade theory. If the tap is cut off at the highest level of the state, this will necessarily have consequences for us on the ground. » However, in 2025 he intended to expand the scope of his event by switching to festival mode. «The Department represents approximately 20% of our budget. So obviously we will heed this warning. I also find it rather advisable to let us know in advance. »
“We aim for patronage”
At the Moulin d’Andé, Stanislas Lipinsky is almost on the same wavelength. President of the association that manages this Mecca of European culture, he didn’t wait for Alexandre Rassaërt’s email to discover that public subsidies are becoming increasingly rare. “The Department is a faithful partner of ours, in particular when it comes to our film writing centre. But for several years it is no coincidence that we have been trying to move more towards sponsorship to diversify our sources of income. » Will it continue to have the same budget initially planned? “We will see. We will talk to the services to try to take the temperature…” Obviously it is getting colder.
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