It is a text which is supposed to give a legislative response to the aspirations arising from the Great Debate post-“yellow vests” and the consultations with the elected officials wanted by Emmanuel Macron. Debated in the hemicycle before the holidays, the “3DS” decentralization bill must be adopted on Tuesday by the deputies. It lists the measures to decentralize, deconcentrate, differentiate and simplify local action.
Without the “big bang” of decentralization or institutional “big night”: the five-year term ends with a text that the oppositions tackle like a “catch-all” (LFI), “lukewarm water” or a “text end of term broom ”(LR). For its part, the majority prefers the time-honored expression of “toolbox”, an antiphon regularly used during the term of office to describe texts which align disparate and technical measures, but which the government hopes to have a concrete and immediate impact on the ground. .
A very technical text
Supported by the Modem Minister of Territorial Cohesion Jacqueline Gourault, who boasts of “operational measures”, the bill is in this respect a quasi-textbook case. Very technical, most of these provisions will not speak to the general public but it is concretely a question of giving new competences to the communities, new places and responsibilities to the elected officials, to simplify certain administrative procedures. The bill also marks a redefinition of the State in the territories around the figures of the prefect and the sub-prefect.
Institutional project for the Aix-Marseille metropolis, management of high school managers, water management by communities, SRU law requiring certain municipalities to have a minimum number of social housing, or transfer of roads from the national network in the departments, the text comes out of its first reading in the Assembly inflated to 266 articles. Before its examination at the Palais-Bourbon, the Senate with a right-wing majority, to which the first of the debates had been reserved in July, had left its mark on a text which must now be discussed in a mixed joint committee (CMP) bringing together senators and deputies . The objective is to find an agreement, for a final adoption before the end of the term of office. But what will the subtle compromises and political balances of this text weigh as the April 2022 presidential election approaches?
Common sense measures
In the Assembly, the deputy LR Thibault Bazin welcomed measures of “common sense” but also warned the government: the CMP will have to “give back power to the mayors”. The provisions relating to water, sanitation, wind turbines or the local inter-municipal urban planning plan (PLUI), “deserve to be reworked”, according to him. At the helm of the bill for more than two years, and endowed with a sense of listening unanimously welcomed by all political groups, Jacqueline Gourault has therefore probably not finished her mine clearance work.
