Jean-Luc Boujon // Photo credit: Europe 1
06:50, October 14, 2024modified to
7:20 a.m., October 14, 2024
In Écully, the installation of a center for foreign minors has created controversy. The metropolis of Lyon, led by environmentalists, wants to use an abandoned building that it owns in the town to set up a reception center, which does not please everyone in this chic town in western Lyon.
It is in an abandoned building, a former engineering school, that the Métropole de Lyon decided to set up a reception center for foreign minors. 70 migrants will therefore be welcomed here, while the authorities check whether they are minors.
“We were told, ‘Whether you like it or not, it will happen!'”
For the Metropolis of Lyon, using these unoccupied premises is obvious, explains its president, the ecologist Bruno Bernard: “These young people who are arriving in increasing numbers, their number has multiplied by three in two years, until then, we put them in the hotel. It costs the community a lot of money and so it is natural, it is a measure of good community management, to take advantage of a building that was already adapted, rather than paying. hotel rooms.”
Except that the project arouses great concern among local residents: “It’s scary. There will be risks of burglary and damage. I would prefer that this not happen here. I have a 14-year-old daughter and so we worry a lot about the safety of our children, knowing that barely 100 meters away, we will welcome migrants.”
The mayor, Sébastien Michel, denounces a coup of force: “The mayor that I am finds himself powerless, with a brutal community, which imposes on him a project which he does not want. We were told ‘That you want it or not, it will happen!'”. The mayor therefore deplores being forced to strengthen security around an installation that he did not want.
