The Paris Region Institute moves to Saint-Denis amid social conflict

Located in the heart of the Montparnasse district, the IPR, which has association status, has been a major player in development in Ile-de-France since its creation in 1960.

The Institute, which has around 200 experts, supported the post-war development of the region, notably giving rise to the creation of new towns and main RER lines. Today he advises Ile-de-France communities on housing, planning, environment, transport and health policy.

In September, its president Valérie Pécresse, also LR president of the Region, asked her management to make three million euros in savings on a budget of 30,8 million euros, announcing an equivalent reduction in its subsidies. by 2025.

Savings can be found in particular in fixed costs, with the organization paying around three million euros in annual rent, an amount which should have increased significantly next year.

“We are committed to making savings on rent to inject this money into other priorities, such as transport and high schools,” assured AFP the regional executive, whose subsidy amounts to 21,4 million euros.

The fact remains that the first solution proposed, a move to the premises of the regional council in Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis), had triggered several demonstrations in the fall, as well as a strike movement lasting several months due to the the narrowness of the premises and the risks weighing on the guarantee of independence of researchers.

It is ultimately to Carrefour Pleyel, at the foot of the future Grand Paris Express station, that the IPR will move.

“We are setting up at the heart of a region in transformation, at the center of the largest public transport network in the world, in direct link with all the Ile-de-France regions,” said its general director Nicolas Bauquet in a press release.

“The weight of rent in our costs was becoming really excessive,” he confirmed to AFP, specifying that he himself wanted to settle in the north of Paris. According to him, the new rent will be “at least half as high” and the overall budget remains “stable due to new international revenues and savings made”.

For its part, the left-wing opposition to the regional council has been criticizing for several months "successive budget cuts with risky justifications" and warning of savings made on other organizations associated with the region, such as Airparif.

Léo Mariasine, CGT union delegate, specifies that the mobilization of employees continues and denounces a “generalized attack against public expertise and public services in general”. He also estimates "a 28% drop in the Region's subsidies to the IPR between 2015 and 2024" if we take into account the integration within it, since 2017, of the Regional Health Observatory, of waste, as well as the Biodiversity Agency and the Energy Agency.