Extract
[...] Its success will depend on budgetary neutrality, the success of the projects undertaken, the ability to convince Paris and Brussels of its exportable potential, and finally, clarifying the question of leaving the Grand Est. Under these conditions, the CEA would become a modern model of local law reconciling regional identity and national unity. Otherwise, it will remain an elegant but fragile attempt to balance nostalgia and republican principles. Notes de bas de page (APA) 1. Dreyfus, J.-D. (2019). Focus on the European Collectivity of Alsace. AJDA, 452. 2. Woehrling, J.-M. [...]
[...] However, this massive block does not exhaust the ambition of the community. In the transfrontier field, the 2019 law elevates the CeA to a leader and authorizes it to conclude conventions, to establish European groups of territorial cooperation (GECT) and to develop an Alsatian scheme of transfrontier cooperation consistent with the SRDEII of the Grand Est. Through this means, it finances, on the Interreg Rhin supérieur program, pedestrian bridges, carpooling hubs, binational campuses, or even the task force.-dedicated force for mutual recognition of nursing diplomas. [...]
[...] The report submitted in June outlines four scenarios: a strengthening of cooperation between departments, the creation of a mixed syndicate, the simple fusion of the departmental councils, and, finally, a special status collective in the sense of Article 72. The elected officials dismiss the first two options, too technocratic, and are wary of the unique regional formula rejected by referendum in 2013. It is therefore the departmental fusion, dressed with a 'European' label, that prevails. The Matignon Declaration of October sets the compass: the collective must be born on January remain within the Grand Est, assume the traditional competences of the departments and receive a reinforced framework of powers adapted to the Rhine identity. [...]
[...] Enthusiasm, as the creation of the CEA demonstrates that it is possible to combine local and national law, to inscribe differentiation in a classical democratic scheme and to articulate territorial proximity and European perspective. Prudence, as the majority of new competences relates to planning; the community does not yet possess a normative power comparable to that of regions with a special status or even that of Corsica. In the absence of further qualitative progress, the CEA could be reduced, according to Alex Tani, to subtle rewriting of an old parchment' ¹². Conclusion The Alsace, marked by 150 years of complex history, benefits from the European Collectivity of Alsace with an innovative institutional framework. [...]
[...] The community has taken over the Departmental Tourism Committee, which has become Alsace Destination Tourism Agency, and is driving a 2022 scheme-2028 promoting the 'Rhenish ecotourism'; the Council of State has indeed judged that the device remained planned, but this planning gives the community the possibility of weighing in the battle of labels and UNESCO classifications ¹? To these prerogatives is added a significant power of political initiative. In February 2022, during the examination of the '3DS' law, the Senate adopts an amendment allowing any department, by joint deliberation, to request the Alsatian competences; the CEA then becomes the prototype of an optional mechanism and, as a result, a stimulus for territorial differentiation ¹?. [...]
