François Baroin and Emmanuel Macron probably did not experience Anne Hidalgo's speech in the same way.
At the end of the AMF congress on Thursday, the mayor of Paris, socialist presidential candidate, first warmly greeted the outgoing president of the association of mayors of France, before strangling - although subtly - the head of state.
Regarding the mayor of Troyes, replaced at the AMF by the mayor LR of Cannes David Lisnard, Anne Hidalgo expressed her
"immense recognition"
, assuring that he had been for seven years
"one of the most respected voices of France of the territories ”
.
To discover
Presidential 2022: where are the candidates in the polls?
"Bond of trust and friendship" with Baroin
“The mayors of France and overseas knew they were proudly represented through you,”
she assured. The socialist, who has known and appreciated François Baroin for a long time, hailed a
"bond of trust and friendship"
but also
"a political bond, based on a certain idea of the role of the municipality, the responsibility of mayors, and maybe even a certain idea of France ”
. She notably recalled the successive crises - fire of Notre-Dame-de-Paris, storms, pandemic ... - affirming that the AMF had known how to remain
"united"
.
"We were also conquerors, pragmatic, realistic, because yes the AMF was engaged even if it is never partisan"
, she underlined.
Her speech, however, changed tone when she turned to Emmanuel Macron, her potential future competitor in the race for the Elysee. Very offensive against the executive during the health crisis, denouncing the lack of consultation with communities, Anne Hidalgo renewed, in hollow, her criticisms.
"Do not wait for the next crisis to rediscover that France stands when it knows how to unite its forces and rely on its mayors,"
she wanted to stress.
"We knew it: mayors are essential to ensure the cohesion of the country"
, hammered the socialist. Before continuing:
"Faced with crises, the State has done its best, but communities have done everything else"
.
"The time has come for a supporting state"
Less than five months before the presidential election, Anne Hidalgo also outlined some tracks of her program, judging for example that
"decentralization"
should
"become a rule of life"
.
"The time has come for a State which accompanies, which takes care of the great balances but which sometimes dispenses with fussy controls, complexifications, creation of standards or doctrines often difficult to understand",
she joked.
During the first confinement in the spring of 2020, the socialist was for example upbeat against the closure of parks and public gardens.
The representative of the Socialists also judged that it was necessary to
"dare" to
carry out a
"law to finance local authorities
".
The only way, according to her, to
“guarantee the financial autonomy”
of the territories, guaranteeing
“reciprocal trust”
with the State.
Otherwise, predicts Anne Hidalgo, territories will enter
"a form of dropout"
.
"No Republican can accept this prospect,"
she warned.
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/KMEYMJKESBAZBE4MRBAM4TGHIQ.jpg)
