Can we talk about local authorities without mayors? The Presidency of the Republic has decided that yes. The meeting, which was to take place on Monday March 13, at the Elysée Palace, between the Head of State and the main representatives of local elected officials, in order to discuss decentralization and the Head of State’s institutional reform project, will be held without the Association of Mayors of France (AMF).
A “abnormal decision” under a “politician stance”denounced the AMF in a statement on Saturday March 11, stating that the date of the meeting was communicated only ” ten days “ avant. “Retained by a previous and major commitment in his commune”its president, the mayor Les Républicains of Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes), David Lisnard, wished to appoint a vice-president.
But this option did not suit Emmanuel Macron, who preferred, on Friday, to exclude the AMF from the meeting. “It has nothing to do with a question of egoexplains an adviser to the Head of State. It is a question of operationality. The President of the Republic is legitimate in wanting to meet the presidents [d’association] who themselves asked to see it. This must be done at the executive level in order to be able to make decisions. » In other words, between numbers one.
Recalling that it was the associations of elected officials who wished, in September, to be received every six months by the Head of State to discuss “the major structuring files”this adviser specifies that the invitation has been sent ” three weeks ago “. Il believes that“a work logic and no flash” would have consisted, for the mayor of Cannes, in explaining “his constraint and to find another date”.
Crises in the fall
David Lisnard see yours “flabbergasted”. He claims to have said immediately that he would not be available and that he would be represented. “We are an associationhe explains. There’s nothing personal in that. And there’s no reason to customize. » Monday, the president of the AMF will therefore be in his city of Cannes to welcome the mayor of Lviv, a city in western Ukraine with which a “solidarity twinning” was tied. “I couldn’t plant it”, he justifies. And a little later, he will be present for the reopening of the famous Carlton Hotel in Cannes. “It’s 700 jobs”he recalls.
Relations between the Head of State and the mayors had already experienced some tension in the fall. In a climate of financial tension, the elected officials had not appreciated that Emmanuel Macron did not attend their congress in November, preferring to visit the economic partners of the municipalities.
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