When Claude Monet lived near the Seine at Argenteuil, he painted white canvas sails and river banks. Today, Argenteuil is part of the suburban sprawl west of Paris, and is more famous for being the most indebted large town in France, reports The Economist.
A recent report from the Cour des Comptes, the national audit body, told the town hall to take urgent measures to curb the deficit “in line with the gravity of the situation”.
Across the country, town halls are facing a budget squeeze. As part of its effort to control the national deficit, which this year is yet again set to bust the euro zone’s 3% rule, President François Hollande’s Socialist government has promised 50 billion euros (64 billion dollars) of budget savings from 2015 to 2017. Of this, it says 11 billion euros will come from reduced transfers to local government. But persuading town halls to apply such cuts may prove the most difficult piece of the French deficit puzzle.
Argenteuil is poorer than the average French town, and its unemployment rate is nearly 17%. The share of residents living in subsidised public housing, in the concrete towers that ring the town, is twice the national average. And like many French towns, Argenteuil’s aspirations to first-class public services exceed its ability to finance them.
Overlooking the river, a vast new plate-glass building houses the Argenteuil-Bezons Agglomeration, a new layer of local government created several years ago to run joint services with its neighbouring town. In the old town centre, near the freshly scrubbed medieval chapel, six gardeners in fluorescent-yellow jackets are planting out municipal flower beds. Up the road sits a smart glass-fronted cultural centre, complete with 500-seat theatre and two cinema screens. Outside, a line of toddlers, grasping each other’s hands tight, totters along the pavement. Argenteuil has 20 crèches, catering to babies from the age of ten weeks. Older pre-school children are served a daily three-course lunch, graced by such dishes as poached fish and quinoa followed by a slice of Camembert.
Locals consider such things to be the basic job of local government. But Argenteuil’s debt already amounts to some 300 million euros. Last year alone, the public-sector wage bill jumped by 8.5%, to 79 million euros, according to the Cour des Comptes, and the deficit reached 17 million euros. “It was insane,” declares Georges Mothron, the Gaullist mayor, who defeated his socialist predecessor in elections in March. In 2013, he says, the town hall hired 377 new staff. This included 40 new workers to staff 150 extra crèche places. The old team disputes the figures, and Philippe Doucet, the previous mayor, describes the spending as “investments in the future”.
Applying similar logic, many French towns have given themselves a facelift over the past decade. Dijon has built a blackcurrant-coloured tram, which wends its way on tracks laid over fresh grass, as well as a new Olympic swimming pool. In the north, Lille and its neighbouring cities of Tourcoing and Roubaix have constructed a new 50,000-seat stadium, a competition-class velodrome, and the biggest aquatic centre north of Paris, due to open next year. New layers of inter-town local government have proliferated. Between 2000 and 2011, the French town-hall headcount increased by 26%.
Read more of this report from The Economist.