The Senate will adopt an enriched text of the decentralization bill

Given for buried at the start of the year due to a busy legislative calendar, the 4D text, which has become 3Ds - for differentiation, decentralization, deconcentration and simplification -, carried by Jacqueline Gourault, will take a first step in Parliament.

But it remains to find a place on the agenda of the National Assembly for the start of the school year, the office of the Minister of Territorial Cohesion still counting on a final adoption before the end of the five-year term.

The bill, which responds to a request from Emmanuel Macron, aims to offer territories "the means to be more dynamic, more agile in the face of the main challenges they face: ecological transition, housing, transport. as well as health and solidarity ". For Ms. Gourault, it should help "breathe life into our democracy".

But like the communities, the senators found precisely that it was short of breath. In committee, then in the hemicycle, they worked to enrich it, within the limits allowed by parliamentary rules, binding in financial matters. The initial 84 articles were inflated to over 200 as the discussion progressed.

"This text is characterized by extreme shyness while having the merit of being a thread, however tenuous it may be, so that the wisdom of the Senate is fully expressed", announced the centrist co-rapporteur Françoise Gatel, before the kick-off of the debates.

The senatorial majority relied in particular on the 50 proposals presented last summer "for the full exercise of local freedoms".

"Constructive" state of mind

At the end of two weeks of examination of often very technical provisions, the entourage of the Minister welcomes "the very constructive state of mind" of the Senate and judges the text modified by the Chamber of the Territories "generally quite online "with the positions of the government.

The cabinet welcomes in particular the "balance" found on the "sensitive" subject of social housing. With flexibility for the mayors, the Senate validated the perpetuation of the SRU law obliging certain municipalities to have a minimum number of social housing.

In the transport component, it authorized the transfer of roads from the national network to the departments, but the experiment of transfer to the regions was postponed. A rejection attributed by the minister's office to a "confusion during the vote" by a show of hands, to which the Senate should return on the occasion of the second deliberation requested by the government.

The Senate has again given the green light to the experimentation of a recentralization of the Revenu de solidarité active (RSA), which responds to a request from the Departmental Council of Seine-Saint-Denis, plagued by financial difficulties in the face of the influx of beneficiaries.

Several points of divergence have nevertheless emerged with the government. The senators thus entrusted the competence of the public employment service to the regions, a provision to which the minister opposed. Similarly, the ministry does not want a joint presidency of the board of directors of the regional health agencies (ARS) shared between the regional prefect and the president of the regional council.

The "dialogue" should continue in the rest of the shuttle on other areas of disagreement. Deeming it unfinished, the senators thus deleted the article granting, on an experimental basis, to the presidents of regional and departmental councils, the power of instruction on the management personnel of middle and high schools.

They put on the table the issue of school medicine, which the departments are asking to be transferred to them.

The left has expressed its opposition to several social provisions, introduced by the right-wing senatorial majority, such as the possibility for the president of the Departmental Council to directly request supporting documents from RSA beneficiaries.

Social housing, RSA: the main measures of the text

Transport

• The text allows the transfer of national roads, highways and portions of public domain roads to departments and metropolitan areas. On an experimental basis, the regions could be entrusted with the competence for the development and management of national roads and highways. The Senate deleted this last point during the examination in the hemicycle, but a second vote is planned before the final vote on the whole of the text.
• Communities will be able to set up automatic speed cameras.
• The text completes the mechanism for transferring the management of small rail lines to the regions, introduced by the LOM law on mobility. It allows service facilities such as stations to be included.

Accommodation

• The text perpetuates the SRU law which sets a minimum number of social housing for certain municipalities. It creates a "social mix contract" between the prefect, the mayor and the president of the intermunicipal association, in which the pace of catching up with the social housing deficit can be adapted.
• The senators have adopted several provisions aimed either at relaxing the obligations or at removing the sanctions applicable to municipalities that have not achieved the objective.
• In rural revitalization zones (14.900 communes concerned) and priority districts of city policy, communities will be able to acquire abandoned goods ("goods without masters") after 10 years (instead of 30).

Employment, social

• The Senate entrusted to the regions, against the advice of the government, the regional policy of access to apprenticeship and vocational training for young people and adults and the coordination of the actors of the public employment service.
• To respond to a request from the Departmental Council of Seine-Saint-Denis, a 5-year experiment is planned to re-centralize the Active Solidarity Income (RSA), for the requesting departments.
• The senators introduced a provision establishing the possibility for the president of the departmental council to directly ask the beneficiaries of the RSA for supporting documents.
• They have increased the departments' room for maneuver in the payment of the RSA by allowing them to impose a condition of assets in order to be able to benefit from it.
• The text transfers the directors of children's social assistance establishments from the hospital public service to the territorial public service, and provides for their appointment by the president of the departmental council.
• The text makes compulsory the use of the controversial file of unaccompanied foreign minors (unaccompanied minors) to rationalize their support by the departments.

Health, education

• The supervisory board of the regional health agencies (ARS) will be transformed into a board of directors. Against the advice of the government, the upper house entrusted its co-presidency to the president of the regional council jointly with the regional prefect.
• The Senate asked for a report to be submitted to Parliament on the prospects for the transfer of school medicine to the departments.
• The senators have planned to integrate the method of immersive teaching in the regional language in the education code.

Cross-border life

• The text aims to remove bureaucratic obstacles for border regions, in particular in the field of health and transport.

Environment, tourism ...

• The senators again introduced a provision, not retained in the climate bill, aimed at giving mayors a right of veto over the installation of wind turbines in their municipalities. The regions could increase, depending on the height of the wind turbines, "blades included", the distance from homes.
• The Senate has enabled municipalities classified as tourist resorts, members of an urban community, to rediscover, if they wish, the exercise of the "tourism promotion" competence, including the creation of tourist offices.
• The text initiates the transfer of the Haras national du Pin to the department of Orne.

Overseas

• A state of exceptional natural calamity overseas is created on an experimental basis, for a period of 5 years. Its effect would be to presume the urgency or force majeure for the application of any regulations by the public authorities in order to respond to the crisis.