Moselle. Do you know what Jean-Marie Pelt thought of the slogan “Metz, crossroads of Europe”?

In a major interview published in the Magazine Otherwise of October 5, 1991, the authors Jacques Walter and Sylvie Hamel questioned Jean-Marie Pelt on “the message that the city of Metz could communicate” to make itself known. “Cities communicate through their communications offices, which are more or less the same for each of them. So they all say the same thing,” began the former first deputy to the mayor Jean-Marie Rausch (1971 to 1983).

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“I find, for example, the slogan “Crossroads of Europe” completely idiotic,” continued Jean-Marie Pelt. Moreover, the founder of the European Institute of Ecology, at the Récollets cloister, had made him “disappear” within the confines of the institute. Inventor of the concept of urban ecology, with notably Roger Klaine and the ecotoxicologist Jean Marie Jouany, he organized numerous conferences on the issue: “Every two months, around thirty French-speaking, French-speaking, Belgian and Swiss, state and municipal authorities. We saw all the cities of France parade by,” recalled the ethnopharmacologist.

“Schuman lived here for 40 years, not four days! »

For him who made Metz the cradle of urban ecology, “if we want to say something fair and true (about Metz and Europe), it is that there was Charlemagne, that Emperor Constantine often stopped there, that Schuman created the CEA (European Coal and Steel Community) and that it is the historic cradle of Europe […]. The communicators don't even know that Schuman lived here. And he lived here for forty years, not four days! »

There, “we are saying something,” argued the professor. But the slogan is “significantly poor” because “all the cities of France and Navarre want to be the crossroads of Europe”.

A debate around the Eurometropolis

In fact, Strasbourg, which shares a border with Germany, has been called Eurométropole since 2015. But Metz was refused by the prefecture this name chosen by elected officials in 2021 under the pretext that it is not a city border. A decision of the Strasbourg administrative court ruled in favor of the prefect of Moselle on November 4, 2024.

The president of the Metz metropolis François Grosdidier wants to appeal this decision: “The Europeanness of Metz is largely established, by its geography, by its history and by its ambitions”, he argued, adding that “Metz has more cross-border workers than Strasbourg”.

Jean-Marie Pelt would surely bring arguments to the debate. But he refused “slogans and stereotypes […] which exempt the elected from thinking for themselves.” Perhaps he would have suggested a name for Metz different from that of Strasbourg?

“Do you know? Metz” can also be listened to as a podcast