The man tasked by French president Emmanuel Macron with coming up with a battle plan for the country's most deprived areas called Thursday for a "radical change" in approach in high-immigration suburbs, reports the Digital Journal.
During campaigning, Macron vowed to tackle what he termed the "house arrest" of many young people who find it hard to escape the poverty, unemployment and crime that blight many suburban areas of French cities.
He promised to invest more in basic services, promote entrepreneurship as a fast-track to success and crack down on employers who push applications from people with Arab- or African-sounding names to the bottom of the pile.
Former centrist minister Jean-Louis Borloo was asked to devise a blueprint, which has been keenly awaited by campaigners who accuse Macron of having overlooked the plight of the poor in his first 12 months in office.
The 60-page report lists 19 programmes to boost the presence of the state in low-income areas, including a "leaders' academy" modelled on Paris's elite ENA college, which Macron attended.
Poor neighbourhoods are "not looking for handouts" but "the right to equality", Borloo said.
But with unemployment levels running at nearly three times the national average and state services "massively less present than elsewhere" faith in the system had been shattered, he said.
Warning that failure to integrate "millions of invisible souls" could cause communities to retreat into separate religious and ethnic identities, Borloo proposed spending 5.0 billion euros to create a "blast effect".
The report could not have come soon enough for Bruno Beschizza, mayor of Aulnay-sous-Bois, a town of 93,000 people north of Paris battling 30 percent youth unemployment and a thriving drugs trade.
Beschizza, a member of the opposition Republicans, endorsed the centrist Macron for president in last year's run-off, seduced by his can-do message.