A meeting between the President of the Republic and the main representatives of local elected officials on Monday, relating to decentralization, will be held without the Association of Mayors of France (AMF).
by Benoît Floc’h
Can we speak local communities without the mayors? The Presidency of the Republic decided that yes. The meeting, which was to take place Monday, March 13, at the Elysée, between the Head of State and the main representatives of local elected officials, in order to evoke decentralization and the project of institutional reform of the Head of State, will be held without the association of mayors of France (AMF).
An “abnormal decision” falling under a “political posture”, denounced the AMF in a statement on Saturday March 11, claiming that the date of the meeting was communicated only “ten days” before. “Returned by a previous and major commitment in its commune”, its president, the mayor Les Républicains de Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes), David Lisnard, wished to mandate a vice-president.
But this option did not agree to Emmanuel Macron, who preferred, Friday, exclude the AMF from the meeting. “This has nothing to do with an ego question, explains an adviser to the Head of State. It is a question of operationality. The President of the Republic is legitimate to want to meet the presidents [of association ] who have themselves asked to see it. This must be done at the executive level to be able to make decisions. “In other words, between numbers one.
Recalling that it was the associations of elected officials who wished to be received every six months by the Head of State in September to evoke “the major structuring files”, this advisor specifies that the invitation was sent “three weeks ago”. He believes that “a logic of work and no glance” would have consisted, for the mayor of Cannes, to explain “his constraint and to find another date”.
of tensions to the ‘fall
David Lisnard says he is “stunned”. He claims to have said that he would not be available and that he would be represented. “We are an association,” he explains. There is nothing personal in there. And there is no reason to personalize. “On Monday, the president of the AMF will therefore be in his city of Cannes to welcome the mayor of Lviv, city in western Ukraine with which “solidarity twinning” was established. “I couldn’t plant it,” he said. And a little later, he will be present for the reopening of the famous Carlton de Cannes hotel. “It’s 700 jobs,” he recalls.
Relations between the head of state and the mayors had already experienced a certain tension in the fall. In a climate of financial tension, elected officials had hardly appreciated that Emmanuel Macron does not attend their congress in November, preferring to visit the economic partners of the municipalities.
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