Just three weeks ago, the European Collectivity of Alsace, resulting from the merger between the two departmental councils, was focused on the baptismal font and its first president, Frédéric Bierry (LR), elected unanimously.
Since then, the news has taken over.
And, a year after the explosion of the Covid in Alsace, the reception given to Jean Castex in Colmar, then in Strasbourg, could be more mixed.
Elected officials will not forget to be alarmed about the delay in vaccinations when the epidemic restarts.
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A subject already discussed with the Prime Minister, last week in Metz, by the president of the regional council (LR), Jean Rottner, who asks for transparency on the vaccine strategy.
Other questions still need to be settled, including in particular the compensation for the transfer of the A 35 and the roads.
The new community is still in the break-in period.
No one will dispute the commitment of the Minister in charge of Territorial Collectivities, Jacqueline Gouraud, to respond to
“Alsace's desire”
.
Nor that of the "regional stage", Brigitte Klinkert, president of the Haut-Rhin departmental council until she entered government.
"State-imposed decision"
Jean Castex - who chaired for four years, at the beginning of the 2000s, the regional chamber of accounts of Alsace - all the better understood the interest of a
"hand-sewn"
organization
, adapted to the challenges of a region neighbor of Basel and Baden-Württemberg.
In his speech, Frédéric Bierry will discuss the issues that pollute the relations between the government and the Alsatian elected officials.
Thus the decision, announced Monday by Minister Barbara Pompili, to confine the 42,000 tonnes of ultimate waste from Stocamine, a subsidiary of the Alsace Potash Mines.
The CEA, the Grand Est region, as well as the environmentalist associations which should demonstrate this morning in Colmar, are calling for the site to be cleaned up.
"If the Minister is afraid to carry out the work, we will take control of the work by asking the State for the 456 million euros provided for this destocking"
, thundered Frédéric Bierry, denouncing an
"ecocide".
"There is a real contradiction between the installation of a community which proceeds from decentralization and, at the same time, a decision imposed by the State on the communities, concerning Stocamine"
, indignant the deputy of Mulhouse, Bruno. Fuchs (Modem).
It will be able to open it during the discussion of three quarters of an hour planned between the head of government, the Alsatian parliamentarians and the presidents of the communities at the end of the speeches.
"The real scandal is the abandonment of a rural and isolated territory, following the closure of Fessenheim"
, adds LR MP for Haut-Rhin Raphaël Schellenberger, deploring that
"no industrial project (not or) planned to replace the nuclear power plant ”
.
Read also:
Alsace: the new entity could well become a laboratory
Jean Castex and his ministers will then go to Strasbourg to meet the environmentalist mayor, Jeanne Barseghian.
Before a round table with students, she wants to draw her attention to
"the rampant precariousness, reinforced by the health crisis, and show the way in which we can work between the local and the national"
.
While the European Parliament has not sat in Strasbourg for a year, Jeanne Barseghian will insist that President Macron come to Alsace to sign the three-year contract "European capital", by
"committing to the transfer to Strasbourg of European activities"
.
