A year after the riots, little or nothing has changed in the city's politics

“We are, to say the least, hungry,” says Gilles Leproust, president of the Ville et Banlieue association and PCF mayor of Allonnes (Sarthe).

“There are a lot of announcement effects. But concretely, we clearly see the gap, each time, between speech and reality.”

In response to the riots, triggered by the death in Nanterre of Nahel, a teenager killed by a police officer during a road check, the government adopted a more security-focused approach.

In July 2023, the portfolio responsible for the City, until now occupied by the ex-socialist Olivier Klein, was entrusted to Sabrina Agresti-Roubache.

The Marseille elected official, accustomed to controversial statements, took on a speech putting security above all else, affirming that this was the first request from her interlocutors on the ground.

Its State Secretariat was no longer attached only to the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion, but also to the Ministry of the Interior.

In terms of security as elsewhere, the announcements made have not been sufficiently followed up with effects, if at all, denounces Gilles Leproust.

“And it’s a real problem, because as there is a gap between what is said and the experience of part of the population, it reinforces among residents a very critical view of public action” , he fears.

"Backwards"

Aside from security, former Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne detailed, in October, several measures aimed at improving social diversity and public services in working-class neighborhoods.

She had promised to develop "educational cities" aimed at supporting students for longer, hoped that the most precarious households would no longer be located in priority neighborhoods and even announced a plan to develop entrepreneurship.

“There are things that have been announced on employment, education, but there is all the support for associations, the whole aspect of delinquency prevention and actions with socio-economic dimensions, which is a bit like the parent poor", judges Christine Lelévrier, urban planner at the University of Paris-Est-Créteil.

City policy must also deal with budgetary austerity.

In the cuts of 10 billion euros announced in February by Bruno Le Maire, it was reduced by 49 million, or 7,6% of the initially voted budget (640 million).

This envelope specifically dedicated to the most disadvantaged neighborhoods is insufficient to compensate for the inequalities of treatment they suffer from other public policies, called "common law", judge Renaud Epstein, sociologist at Sciences Po Saint-Germain-en- Laye.

“Over the past year, developments in major public policies have not moved in the direction of favorable treatment of neighborhoods, quite the contrary!”

And to cite the housing bill - aborted by the dissolution of the National Assembly - presented in May by Minister Guillaume Kasbarian.

This planned to relax the social housing construction objectives for town halls below the legal quotas. According to Renaud Epstein, this project went “backwards from 25 years of desegregation attempts.”

“No reform, no questioning of police practices in the neighborhoods has emerged,” he notes. While the report to the police was the trigger for the riots.

"City policy as a public policy, with its credits, its programs, it continues as before, without changes. But on the side of sectoral policies, it goes the opposite (of what should be done), and side of the speeches, it’s stigmatizing.”

“Emmanuel Macron himself, who had nevertheless had rather liberal and benevolent speeches towards the neighborhoods during his first presidential campaign, today only has a speech calling for order”, observes again the sociologist.

The future of urban renewal, the main expenditure item for urban policy, also remains unclear.

Anru, the national agency which manages it, has no longer had a president since Catherine Vautrin entered the government in January. And no one knows what it will become after the completion of the current program (NPNRU), set for the end of 2026.

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.