The Removal of the General Competence Clause: A Substantial Upheaval of the Traditional Territorial Organization in France
Download
Read an extract
Themes
Decentralization, Territorial Organization, France, NOTRe law, MAPTAM law, Regions law, Act III of decentralization
Reader
Abstract
Extract
of 8
Abstract
This document analyzes the removal of the general competence clause for departments and regions, and the territorial councillor, as part of the Act III of decentralization in France. It explores the apparent break with the traditional territorial organization and the systemic continuity with the law of reform of territorial communities. The document highlights the reforms introduced by the NOTRe law, the MAPTAM law, and the Regions law, and their impact on the territorial organization of France.
Extract
[...] This continuity aims to confer more autonomy to the intermunicipal level, in a continuous and progressive manner, within a framework of economic and territorial solidarity. However, persistent difficulties in implementation show that this continuity is still made in rupture. B. A persistence of common difficulties in the legislative texts of 2010 to 2015 of a fairly uniform legal arsenal While it is undeniable that a common thread appears throughout the period from 2010 to 2015 in the legislative texts on territorial administration, it is just as evident that these laws aim to improve the territorial division and financial and budgetary distribution regime, a mark of the desired change. [...]
[...] « France needed a strong and centralized power to become what it is. It now needs a decentralized power so as not to fall apart.». It is with these words that Francewas had explained the need for decentralization for France"1. Decentralization has been, in France, a real process, a step-by-step construction2. By an initial idea of decentralization conceived as a relationship between central power, impossibility to manage everything, and decentralized power, technical support3, Today, we have moved to a completely new relationship. [...]
[...] an intrinsic contradiction that is not negligible, which once again shows how difficult it is to guarantee a fair balance between constitutional principles of free territorial administration of communities and republican principles of unity and indivisibility. [...]
[...] With its replacement of the general clause of competence by specific competences entrusted to each level of local authority and a redistribution of competences, as well as a radical change such as the abolition of the departmental level from 2020 and of the territorial councillor, these recent laws seem to aim to make the territorial organization of France clearer, confer new competences on the regions and simplify the relations between local authorities and the State. These recent laws therefore seem to represent a break in the decentralization process known in France until now. The question that will then be interesting to ask is whether the break declared by Act III of decentralization is an effective break or whether, through radical measures, it ends up being part of a systemic continuity with the different acts of decentralization. In other words, is it a break in continuity or continuity in a break? [...]
[...] This new concept, in fact, had « known difficult beginnings and relatively limited initial achievements from a quantitative point of view»13, However, with the 2015 text, the number of municipalities concerned by this commitment in the process of transformation into a new municipality has known a great boom and this thanks to these new legislative provisions more favorable and to an expected financial impulse. And finally, even the most thorny question, that of the suppression of the general clause of competence for departments and regions is not new. In fact, this territorial division had already been decided in the RCT law, to be then erased in the MAPTAM law and finally reintroduced by the NOTRe law. [...]
