Faced with the anger of city councilors over the budgetary efforts planned for communities in 2025, the Prime Minister outlined simplification measures. While referring questions on the budget to ongoing discussions in the Senate.
This Thursday, November 21, Prime Minister Michel Barnier gave pledges to mayors angry at the budgetary “cuts” planned for 2025, by launching a major project on simplification, but without loosening the budgetary grip. , their first demand.
Faced with 4,000 elected officials gathered at the close of the 106th Congress of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF), the fine Brexit negotiator first defused criticism of responsibility for France's budgetary rout.
“It is not fair to point the finger at municipalities and local authorities as if they were responsible for our deficit,” he declared, with thirteen ministers at his side.
The mayors and all communities are protesting against the five billion euros of “savings” planned for 2025, the bill for which they rather estimate at 11 billion, and which they consider to be unsustainable levies, with a recessive effect as a result.
“Putting an end to normative inflation”
In the spirit of the decentralization laws, Michel Barnier touched a sensitive chord for mayors, by ensuring that he wanted to reverse their feeling of “being under normative and financial supervision” of the State.
Extolling the merits of the municipalities, a “benchmark for our fellow citizens”, he judged that their vocation was not to be “subcontractors of the State” but “more partners”.
The first vice-president of the AMF André Laignel had previously called for “decolonizing” communities “to finally open up the time for local freedoms”.
The head of the executive responded by promising “less talkative laws, which stick to general objectives and which do not seek to settle the details”. “We must put an end to normative inflation”, insisted Michel Barnier, ensuring that the over-transpositions of European directives would be “examined one by one” and for some “deleted”.
He also announced “four important decisions (…) in the coming weeks”. A circular will be issued to ask administrations to propose as a priority laws which “set objectives” and “leave room for local authorities to interpret the rules”.
“Turning the pyramid” on “zero net artificialization”
The role of the National Council for the Evaluation of Standards (CNEN) will also be increased to clarify laws “well ahead of their presentation to Parliament” while the effects of laws on communities will be integrated into their impact study.
Finally, a simplification of “the stock of standards” will be carried out in matters of town planning and the environment.
The Prime Minister took as an example the need to “upend the pyramid” on the law on “zero net artificialization” of soils (ZAN), the objective of which is to stop concrete use in 2050.
“The ZAN must not be cascaded, and mechanically, from the region down to the smallest municipality,” said Michel Barnier.
Concerning the budgetary effort requested from communities, he recalled the concessions already made to the departments, in particular on the abandonment of the retroactive nature of the reduction in the rate of the VAT Compensation Fund (FCTVA).
For the rest, “the discussion continues in the Senate”, he simply declared, promising that “additional amendments will evolve the initial text”.
“A lullaby”
Another major demand from mayors fifteen months before the next municipal elections, the improvement of the conditions for exercising their mandate will be the subject of a text which will be debated in the National Assembly in February, on the basis of a proposal from Senate law which will be supplemented by proposals “in terms of promoting the connection with professional life, training and retraining”.
For rural municipalities, he promised to consider extending the joint list vote to municipalities with less than 1,000 inhabitants, while he reiterated his “openness” to the return of the accumulation of mandates.
“The findings are the right ones, the stated intentions are the right ones (…) but on the very concrete measures of additional levies from the State (…) we have not had a response and the rest will depend on this that it will come out of the discussion in the Senate”, reacted the president of the AMF David Lisnard.
“The Prime Minister kindly sang us a lullaby but did not respond to the concerns of all the mayors and the anger of many,” criticized the socialist André Laignel.
“In an hour of speech, five minutes on finances while the 2025 budget, with a bleeding of 11 billion, is the worst of all time,” added the first councilor of Issoudun (Indre), for whom the local public services “are more in danger than ever.”
