The wishes of Eric Piolle, Mayor of Grenoble

City of Grenoble

Wishes for 2025, Eric Piolle, Mayor of Grenoble.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Grenobloises, dear Grenoblois, 2024 was a strong year for our city.
We commemorated the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of Grenoble. A story that continues to inspire us. Grenoble, one of the five “Compagnon” cities
of Liberation”, played a central role in the Resistance and the return to freedom of our territory.
I had the honor, as co-president of the Order of the Liberation, to carry this memory and to recall the importance of the spirit of Resistance which made it possible to liberate our territory
of the Nazi occupier and to build the new post-war world.
The Resistance was a sum of courage motivated by different reasons.
With this same objective: to regain freedom. These were men and women who risked their lives every day, sometimes lost their lives, and who,
while bullets whizzed past their ears, had the lucidity sufficient to think about the world they wanted for the future.
We brought this spirit to life in 2024, through events in our city, commemorations that we organized with memorial associations
of the territory, also with the programming of our cultural facilities, the commitment of our partners and through concrete actions to build a city
which takes into account the essential needs of each and everyone.
We must also take into account the constraints dictated by this need to keep a habitable planet, to preserve biodiversity and natural resources.
increasingly rare.

In this year 2024, we inaugurated the Chantal Mauduit library, a cultural and sporting venue in the Mistral-Eaux Claires district, a place where I find myself today
to make these wishes. We delivered the Anne Sylvestre school in the Flaubert district. We pedestrianized the surroundings of several schools. We have vegetated
playgrounds or even completed with the metropolis the first phase of the renovation of avenue Marcellin Berthelot which connects Chavant and Villeneuve.
We introduced menstrual leave for all menstruating people working in our community, and we covered school supplies,
thus reducing the remaining burden for families.
We have expanded our free municipal cycling school for all Grenoble residents.
This year was also an opportunity to launch free public transport for the least well-off 30% of Grenoble residents and to create 100 accommodation places.
additional, beyond our municipal powers for people in very precarious situations.

This march towards greater equality does not stop there. 2025 will be a year of innovation to open up new rights and build a sustainable and desirable future
for everyone. In 2025, we will continue to build on this pioneering heritage.
It is a transmission through generations.
We will celebrate 50 years of the Veil law (1975), which gave women the right to control their body, and we will celebrate 20 years of the law
disability, that of 2005 which allowed new advances for the autonomy and dignity of people with disabilities. These milestones are steps
towards a society that takes into account the most vulnerable and corrects injustices.

In Grenoble, in 2025, we will carry these values through new initiatives. The first milestones of social food security, so that everyone can
have access to quality food accessible to all residents, regardless of their economic or social situation.
A municipal health mutual also to facilitate access to necessary care, and the implementation of a public early childhood service, to strengthen the reception of the youngest
and support their families. We are also continuing to transform our public spaces to create even more common life. The beautification of the Place de Metz,
of Cours Berriat, Avenue Rhin et Danube, Avenue Jeanne d'Arc, with more greenery, more space for pedestrians and also for bicycles.
We will always create more Coqueli'cours, these redeveloped schoolyards, and Children's Places. This will continue.
It is also a revegetation of the Flaubert district which awaits us for 2025.
We will invest in places essential to collective life.
The Saint-Bruno library will reopen its doors, modernized and welcoming, as will the Malherbe and Jouhaux gymnasiums.
In rue Joseph Chanrion, the risk reduction center will be renovated to better support vulnerable groups.
We will continue to renovate schools with work which will notably concern the Ferdinand Buisson school group this year.

Our priority, still there towards working-class neighborhoods, will be reflected in the continuation of the urban renovation project of Villeneuve and the Olympic Village,
with hundreds of renovated housing units and also with new equipment for the neighborhood and the youth of the Arlequin neighborhood. After two years of work
and years of research on concrete, the Perret Tower, symbol of our heritage, should see its work completed at the end of the year and this will be the opportunity for a reopening,
probably from the end of the year or the beginning of 2026.
2025 is also an opportunity to extend the spirit of the National Council of the Resistance and its Happy Days program: expand rights, improve quality
life, strengthen solidarity.

These new advances are part of a future perspective that we already imagine for 2040.
A sustainable city, a city that welcomes, a city that makes all imaginations possible.
We are all different.
So I wish you a year 2025 full of solidarity, progress, collective success and I give you a special appointment in May 2025
for the biennial of cities in transition, to build together this friendly and desirable future.

Happy New Year to everyone.”