The metropolitan council of this Thursday, November 7 was very eventful in Nice. At noon, 18 elected officials left the assembly, following their exclusion from a preparatory meeting earlier in the day. Later in the afternoon, the entire chamber was evacuated due to smoke.
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It was a somewhat unusual metropolitan council which took place this Thursday, November 7, in Nice. If political tensions between elected officials are recurrent in this assembly, at each of its sessions, they reached their peak at midday, when 18 elected officials made the decision to get up from their seats and simply leave the hemicycle.
In question, a working meeting which was held the same morning, with some of the mayors of the Metropolis, without all of the 51 mayors who make it up having been invited to it. Unacceptable for Xavier Beck, the mayor of Cap d'Ail: “There is a charter and statutes which provide that before all sessions, there must be a meeting of the council of mayors, since this meeting has a decision-making nature. That's why I left the session“, he explains.
It must be said that tensions are numerous at the moment, particularly since Eric Ciotti joined the National Rally during the legislative elections last June. But Xavier Beck assures him, today, it was not a political spectacle, but “a fundamental problem”.
Elected officials are divided on the question of financing the third United Nations Ocean Conference, which will take place in Nice shortly before the summer of 2025, which must be transferred from the City of Nice to the Metropolis. “If Christian Estrosi wants to organize the UN ocean summit, he has every right to do so as the City of Nice. But the inhabitants of the metropolis do not have to finance Nice town hall“, estime Xavier Beck.
According to him, if the council of mayors was not organized this Thursday, it is above all for fear of rejection of this funding. The mayor of Tourette-Levens had also warned that he would not vote for this transfer this Wednesday on X.
While the 18 angry elected officials left the session, Christian Estrosi reacted, believing that it was not he who had “explodes the cohesion of this assembly, but those who, by choice or by following, have decided to follow the arc of the extreme right”.
A few hours after this moment of agitation and while discussions had resumed in the hemicycle, a suspicious outbreak of smoke coming from a sort of electrical panel caused the metropolitan council to be evacuated as a precaution. According to our colleagues from France Bleu Azur, the incident is linked to the air conditioning system. A small gas leak was also reportedly detected.
Elected officials and chamber staff were evacuated outside.
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© Hélène Granouillac
The elected officials and their collaborators waited a moment outside the Mediterranean University Center where the debates were held, before Christian Estrosi finally came to announce that the session would not resume this Thursday.
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