There have been rows about local authority spending in France for years. Ever since the question of the French state's budget deficit developed into a recurring theme – in other words, for the last fifteen years or so – the country's towns, départements (akin to counties) and regions have been accused of wasteful spending. The weekly news magazine Le Point has made a speciality of the subject, regularly using its front page – in between reports on where to invest your money or the latest property price trends – to pillory local authorities on how they spend their money. In September 2012, for example, the magazine ran a headline about the “scandal of local authorities”, writing of “dizzying levels of hidden spending” and of “insatiable local chieftains”. These are the same local “chieftains” whom François Baroin, the head of the Association des Maires de France (AMF), the mayor of Troyes south-east of Paris and a former minister under President Nicolas Sarkozy, called on to protest on the streets last Saturday against a reduction in funding by the socialist-run central government.
With each successive austerity plan the talk of “local spending wastages” has grown more incessant, to the point where it has now become a self-evident reality that is endlessly repeated. An example of how reaction to this issue has changed over recent years can be seen in the official reports of the French audit court the Cour des comptes. As recently as 2012 this spending watchdog noted that the contribution of local authorities to the overall state budget deficit was in fact nil, as by law these councils are not allowed to adopt a budget that does not balance the books. Yet just two years later, in 2014, the same body wrote a severely critical report in which local authorities were accused of being responsible for “a third of the delay in reducing the country's deficits”. Successive governments have meanwhile accused the towns, départements and regions of, at best, failing to contribute to the national effort and, at worst, of being bottomless financial pits.
It has to be said that there is no shortage of examples of where local authority spending has spiralled out of control; the construction of self-indulgent regional and departmental headquarters, excessive spending on public relations, nepotism when it comes to hiring, duplicated activities hidden inside the complexity of the structure of local government, and feudal-style behaviour by some local leaders, all of this has taken place and still takes place despite the denials of some of those accused of such excesses.
The problem is that while such examples are attacked by central government and ridiculed by the liberal press, the fact remains that local government is a major contributor to economic growth. The construction of sports halls, secondary schools, middle schools, roads, railway lines, blocks of flats and so on that is voted through by councils across the country makes these authorities by far the biggest source of public sector investment in the country. So when a government announces reduced funding, the public works sector – which depends on local markets for 70% of its business – and the construction industry – which depends on councils for 15% of its work – suffer as a result and complain.
The relationship between local authorities and private firms has a touch of schizophrenia about it that reminds one of the relations that exist between Serge Dassault, chairman of the defence and aviation firm the Dassault Group, and the French state. In other words, a curious mixture of unyielding criticism and a financial umbilical cord. So while the private sector violently attacks wastefulness on the one hand, it demands sustenance from those very same public authorities on the other. That is exactly what is happening today. With the support of the construction and public works sectors, François Baroin, who as budget minister carried out a freeze in local authority funding in 2010, is today attacking the expansion of a policy that he himself set in motion.
François Hollande highlighted this contradiction last Friday, the day before the mayors' protest, from his political stronghold in the Corrèze département in central France when he criticised “a certain number of national elected representatives who always want more savings, lower spending, less taxation, and who would like to have more funding”.
Two month ahead of December's regional elections in France, the electoral dimension of the AMF's actions is as clear as daylight. This body representing the country's mayors is taking part in the kind of ritual display which makes French people despair and drives them to vote for extremist candidates or not vote at all.
For the discourse of local elected representatives simply varies according to their current situation. As a government minister Baroin called for tough budgets, while as president of the Association des Maires de France he is demanding money from the state. On the other hand, when Hollande was a local elected representative – he was head of the Corrèze departmental council having been mayor of Tulle, the capital town of Corrèze - he backed the protests by the then socialist-dominated bodies representing France's regions and départements against a reduction in funding. Yet here he is, as president of France, calling on the same councillors to “make savings” because “savings means less tax for the French people”.
This masked ball may seem superficial and ritualistic, but the game taking place between the central and local authorities is more dangerous than it appears, especially for François Hollande, because of its very political nature. Local councils, and above all the towns, form the closest link between the public authorities and the lives of citizens. This is the arena where politics is more than just the simple confrontation between the Right and Left. It is the place where, on a daily basis, one can see the direct impact on voters' lives of the decisions made by local councillors. On this level François Hollande's decision to adopt the economic language of his erstwhile adversaries runs the risk of becoming a political Waterloo for him.
In fact, while the endless squabbles over what towns spend, over the retreat of the state, over wasteful spending or budgetary efforts are bad enough, the actions carried out by those towns are on quite another level. The squabbling over finance is not the only thing at stake when it comes to local councils. When the state tells local authorities to “spend less” it reduces the scope of political action to an accounting process in which expenditure and receipts become mere figures on a balance sheet. If spending has to be cut to the bone, in which areas will the councillors be tempted to take action? In those which cost money and bring in no income. For example in spending on culture, a trend which has led to the end of some festivals just about everywhere. The cuts fall, too, on grants to sports and music associations, on the many initiatives which help locals live their lives. Yet who can say how much culture gives back, how much having a child at a crèche is worth, who can estimate the value of a teenager being able to run around a sports ground or determine the benefit of a local choir?
By obliging local authorities just to consider the figures, François Hollande is imposing his own political shift towards social liberalism on people's daily lives. He is no longer cutting large budgets but is forcing local councillors to reduce services. That is the point that the mayors were making on Saturday and it is this reality that the media passes on, because they have the means to show it. Towns once simply seen as spendthrift have suddenly become the focus for reports on sports halls in ruins, pot-holed streets, associations helping the sick which can no longer operate or music academies that are closing down. Suddenly, that expenditure which did not bring in a single cent is now seen as a national treasure under threat. Suddenly elected representatives on the Right – with Baroin at the forefront – who were cheerfully criticising the follies of local councillors when most of them were “from the Left” are now attacking what they see as a squeeze on social spending. Adopting an unfamiliar stance, the Socialist Party (PS) in power, which extols its virtues as a modernising force, finds itself in the role of the body which is “squeezing” this public spending.
This political episode will end up setting the scene for the forthcoming regional elections. As always with local issues in heavily-centralised France, the mayors' protest will not figure long in national media coverage. But make no mistake about it: the protests highlight an existential malaise that is not going away. The next time this angst gets expressed publicly will be at the regional elections on December 6th and 13th. It could be brutal.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter