2024-03-28 00:11:45
The president of the executive council of Corsica, Gilles Simeoni, during the vote on the status of autonomy of the island, in the hemicycle of the Regional Assembly of Corsica, in Ajaccio, on March 27, 2024. PASCAL POCHARD-CASABIANCA / AFP
The constitutional writing providing “a status of autonomy” of Corsica “within the Republic” was adopted by a large majority on the evening of Wednesday March 27 by the Corsican Assembly, with thirteen elected officials out of sixty-three voting against the granting of local normative power.
The text, composed of six paragraphs, was submitted to a vote in three parts, on the notion of Corsican community, the possibility of normative power granted to island elected officials, and finally the idea of submitting this text to Corsican voters via a popular consultation. A fourth vote came to record this consultation in three acts of the sixty-three elected representatives of the Corsican Assembly.
Envious of Guyana, Alsace, the Basque Country and Brittany, this text is the one on which the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and eight Corsican elected officials representing the different political tendencies of the island hemicycle had agreed mid-March in Paris.
A text voted by a large majority
Sixty-two elected officials voted for the first paragraph of the text, which provides “the recognition of an autonomous status for Corsica within the Republic which takes into account its own interests linked to its Mediterranean insularity, to its historical, linguistic and cultural community having developed a singular link to its land”. Only one independentist elected representative voted against.
The same vote was obtained for paragraph 6 of the text, which provides for validation of this text by Corsican voters via a “popular consultation”.
Finally, regarding the four paragraphs relating to “normative power” which could be granted to island elected officials, forty-nine voted for, thirteen against and one abstained.
During the last vote, stating that “the text thus adopted will be transmitted to parliament”sixty-two elected officials voted for and one against.
Gérald Darmanin had called Gilles Simeoni, president of the executive council of Corsica, to “seek broad consensus” within “the Territorial Assembly, beyond the Corsican autonomist and nationalist family”.
Far from being unanimous in Paris
If this Corsican step is considered to have been reached by President Macron, those of the national Parliament will remain, where the project is far from unanimous. The right, a majority in the Senate, is in fact hostile to this constitutional reform which, to be validated, will have to be voted on identically by the National Assembly and the upper house before the meeting of deputies and senators in Congress, where a majority three-fifths will be required.
The date of the popular consultation of the Corsicans on this text has not yet been determined.
Discussions on a form of autonomy were launched after weeks of violence on the island in 2022, following the death of independence activist Yvan Colonna, attacked in prison where he was serving a life sentence for the 1998 assassination of prefect of Corsica Claude Erignac.
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