Gathering strength

France’s local authorities are becoming stronger and stronger, and that is a good thing for democracy, says Jean-Louis Destans

Local authorities account for more than 70 per cent of the public spending in France and are very often at the forefront of innovative and experimental policies that enable them to ensure that this money is spent more effectively and efficiently. Local authorities are far more than that, however. They represent government at its most democratic because they most directly serve the people in the 26 regions, 102 departments and 36,000 communes of France.

The political arena has changed considerably at the local level in recent years. First, the number of areas where local authorities have the power to act has increased greatly, as the central government has given the regions and départements control over various public sector workers (such as non-teaching staff in schools) and public expenditure (such as the minimum wage, support for handicapped people or vocational training funds).

But these powers have been handed over without sufficient funding from central government to ensure that they are carried out correctly – a source of much controversy. At the same time, the central government has washed its hands of issues such as territorial cohesion – the most recent ‘contract’ between central and local government, for the period 2007-13, stated quite clearly that this was now the job of the départements and the regions.

The second major change has been the increase in the number of inter-communes, where communes join forces with each other, or with bigger towns or cities, to work together on areas such as economic development, transport and town planning. This trend started slowly in the 1990s, but with the support of central government has gathered pace considerably in recent years. It allows local communities and their elected officials to have a far greater say in their own development. More importantly, it means that local communities are far better placed to face the challenges of the future than the central government, whose reforms have largely failed.

But there is still a great deal of progress to be made in the relationship between central and local government. Local communities have no real legislative power – that has never been the case, and calls for change are not widely shared. It is certainly true that they could benefit from greater financial autonomy, and the trend towards local taxes being used to swell the coffers of central government rather than supply local services is certainly one I would like to see reversed.

But the biggest rift comes in the failure of central government to understand and accept the importance of local authorities. For example, the French government does not feel that it is worthwhile talking to the regions when it comes to preparing a national response to EU legislation covering areas where the regions have responsibility. This is all the more frustrating given the fact that it is more often than not at the local level that real change is introduced – for example, many of the environmental measures agreed by the national government last autumn have been in place for many years at the local level.

Local authorities are also more likely to take an innovative approach to social issues: my département, for example, is the first in the country to run a particular scheme aimed at helping people back to work. It is very often at the local level that the only real debate takes place about how policies will affect the day-to-day lives of citizens – water use, housing, culture and sport, the fight against exclusion, transport, etc. are all primarily local policy issues.

If we restricted ourselves solely to the powers transferred upon us, we would simply become a localised version of the central government. But what the real work of local and regional authorities shows is that the flexibility and creativity of local government makes it far more effective at implementing public policies. The Lisbon treaty will reaffirm the importance of subsidiarity and proportionality, and the France should use its presidency to acknowledge the role of local authorities in implementing many European policies.

That at least is what I hope to see in the next six months, and there will be many events hosted by local communities across France to emphasise that point: July, for example, will see the launch of the first European network of local communities, a scheme with which I have been closely involved, while in October the French Senate will host a subsidiarity summit. And finally, the six months of the French presidency will also see a lot of work on defining the concept of territorial cohesion which the Lisbon treaty makes one of the specific goals of the EU.