In his editorial Friday, Nicolas Beytout returns to the reverse of Emmanuel Macron, who ultimately decided not to deconfinement by region. He points in particular to overly centralized crisis management since the start of the epidemic.
Emmanuel Macron said yesterday that the deconfinement would not be done by region.
Phew, we passed very close to a disaster, with a France that would have been deconfigured here, but still strictly confined there. Because how to do it without creating borders? How to cross a confined region to go from one unconfined place to another. How to do for "frontier" employees? For companies whose suppliers or customers were located in a blocked region? Kafka himself would not have found his young there.
Several local elected representatives and Presidents of regions requested it, however, this deconfinement by region.
True, but there is a misunderstanding about what they were claiming. When Hervé Morin, the president of the Normandy region, requests a "regionalized deconfinement", he clearly says that the main principles must be fixed by the State (for example transport security measures, authorization to open schools), but that local management must be done on a case-by-case basis.
Exactly what the Elysee had said after the speech by Emmanuel Macron announcing the date of May 11. The example which had been quoted evoked departments like Cantal or Lozère, which, being much less affected by the virus, could return more quickly to normal life. That's exactly it, not regional, but regionalized, nuance.
All the same, since the beginning of this epidemic, has the management of the crisis not been too centralized?
Yes, of course. Sometimes to the point of caricature. I am thinking of the case of masks, which the State has so badly managed, with requisitions, administrative blockages, problems of standards and late payments. During this time, the departments, the town halls ensured what the central State was unable to do.
I think back and forth about the decision to close open markets (the outdoor markets so vital to the territories). The decision had been taken at the national level, but the application of the exceptions had to be managed by the prefects. Obviously, it was still too far from the field, it was the mayors who had the best vision of the problem. But no, the prefects are the state, and force has remained with the state.
Anyway, Emmanuel Macron still brought together some of their representatives yesterday. Is it a way to reconnect with the local?
Exactly. But all of this is done in part backwards. In reality, the state has a fundamental lack of confidence in what it does not directly control. And yet the central state is a poor manager, and we have seen in the case of masks, or tests, that it is far from being an outstanding organizer.
Basically, all of this is a matter of trust. However France, and the administration in particular, works conversely, in distrust. This time, to try to get out, we now speak of "co-responsibility" in the management of deconfinement, that of mayors and prefects, representatives of the State. This is progress, but we are still far from what has proven its worth elsewhere.