New relocated quarterly meeting for the Moselle departmental council on Monday December 2, 2024. This time, it was in Forbach that the departmental councilors met for a meeting whose agenda was turned upside down by national financial uncertainty. In this hemicycle too, the debate on budgetary orientations has been postponed. On January 27, more precisely, even if it is not certain that we will see things more clearly by then. In any case, it is impossible to discuss a budget with “such fragile knowledge”, believes Patrick Weiten, who nevertheless already knows that he will have to make “political choices” as he has always done. “We have mastered the operation, the debt, we want to continue to have investments in strategic issues. »
Like his fellow department presidents, he regrets seeing his freedoms to act and choose increasingly restricted. “70% of the Departments' budget is imposed by State decisions. We should be able to raise the tax. For me, it's not a bad word. Let us be given the freedom of the recipe and the decision of operation and investment. »
The church in the center of the village
A president who still finds it difficult to swallow the five billion euros in savings recommended by the State, two of which fall to the departments. Even if the figure changes, even if Michel Barnier's speech to the Departments of France reassured him somewhat, Patrick Weiten wants to put the church back in the center of the village and the departments in their rightful place. “Let us be clear: yes, France is in a worrying financial situation. Yes, we realized it. Yes, we are ready to participate in the collective effort. But we refuse to acknowledge the decline of the Departments which would announce their certain death within a few months for some and a few short years for others. And all the more so since the Departments are already heavily involved in the effort to restore public accounts. Let us remember again, the Departments vote for their budget to be balanced,” he declared during his introductory speech where, despite this uncertain atmosphere, he wanted to exude optimism. “We must not give in to any defeatism, we must demonstrate ever greater voluntarism,” he insisted.
Particularly on one issue: white hydrogen, the discovery of a deposit of which two years ago in the department caused a lot of talk. But since the announcement, things have not progressed quickly enough for the president of Moselle's liking. He calls for “a great collective, political and energetic mobilization to support this project today so that it becomes a reality tomorrow”.
And to insist: “We let it happen even though we see that things are stuck. The politician must take a position. It has to move.”
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