Should Alsace be granted the powers of a region in order to separate it from Lorraine and Champagne-Ardenne? Long championed by certain Alsatian elected representatives, the idea is due to be debated by the French National Assembly on 7 April – much to the dismay of the president of the Grand Est region, who described it on Tuesday as “absurd”.
Ten years after the merger of the regions decided under François Hollande’s presidency, the EPR group of President Emmanuel Macron has tabled a bill in the Assembly aimed at the “return of the Alsace region”.
Approved in committee on Monday, the text intends to create a “special status local authority” by granting the current European Collectivity of Alsace (CEA) – which resulted from the merger of the Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin departmental councils – the powers of a region. Alsace would thus become both a department and a region, the project’s promoters point out, expressing hope that the move would bring recognition of its “historical specificities” and greater “efficiency in public action”.
However, for Franck Leroy, president of the Grand Est Regional Council, this “to say the least, absurd” project “does not correspond at all to the expectations of our fellow citizens”.
“I have never been questioned about this on the ground”, Leroy stressed during a press conference in Strasbourg, adding that “there are far more important and serious issues in our country than this one”.
According to the bill’s supporters – including Alsatian MPs Brigitte Klinkert, Olivier Becht, Françoise Buffet, and Charles Sitzenstuhl – the aim is to “simplify the tiers of administrative management” and achieve “budgetary savings in the region of €80 to €100 million a year”.
By “merging” departmental and regional powers, “procedures are simplified, we are more efficient,” CEA president Frédéric Bierry, a staunch defender of the reform, also argued recently. He claims to be backed by polls indicating that “Alsatians are in favour of their region leaving the Grand Est”.
However, for Leroy – himself from the Champagne region, but surrounded at the press conference by several Alsatian members of his majority – the promised savings “are unproven” to say the least. If the bill is passed, “Alsatians will indeed be among themselves, but they will have fewer resources to develop, people must be told the truth.”
