France prepares devolution to end voters' apathy
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Your support makes all the difference.Plans for the most sweeping devolution of power to the regions for 20 years were agreed by the French government yesterday.
The most capital-city dominated country in western Europe is to be asked to change its constitution to declare France a "decentralised" state, with new tax-raising and administrative powers for local government.
The plans for French devolution, which must be agreed by referendum or a two-thirds vote of both houses of parliament, are the personal hobby-horse of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
As a former provincial baron himself, he believes the widespread contempt for politics and government revealed in elections earlier this year can only be cured by shifting power to the people. He said yesterday devolution would "decongest" and "give oxygen" to France Mr Raffarin also hopes, by rearranging the institutional furniture, to discover a painless way to reduce the size of the French state and shrink the country's army of civil servants. The minister for "local freedoms," Patrick Devedjian, describes it as the "mother of all other reforms".
In other words, the government hopes, by shifting powers to the provinces, to bypass and eventually break the national power of the public-service unions that have destroyed previous efforts to rationalise the French state. There are 6 million public- sector jobs in France, said to be at least a million more than is strictly necessary.
Critics complain that, unless the Prime Minister is prepared to tackle the unions, Mr Raffarin's reforms may simply duplicate many functions and increase the number of state employees.
The plans agreed yesterday leave open the areas in which extra powers would be surrendered to the provinces. They are likely to involve more control over transport, education, health and housing, where government is already shared with Paris.
Under the draft constitutional change agreed by the cabinet, the first article of the constitution of the Fifth Republic would be changed to declare that the "organisation" of the French state is "decentralised". It formally reverses a centralising obsession that goes back to the Revolution and beyond.
The geography of French local government may also change. The proposals allow for mergers between the 96 départements –broadly similar to British counties – that have existed for 200 years and even for merger between the 22 regions that were created by a first, limited wave of French devolution in 1982.
In practice, few départements or regions are expected to want to change their shape.
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