INTERVIEW
The second round of municipal elections will be held on June 28, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced mid-day Friday. A decision immediately welcomed by François Rebsamen, the mayor of Dijon, for whom the economic recovery, coming out of the health crisis triggered by the epidemic of Covid-19, cannot be made without the installation of the new local powers. "I had launched an appeal with thirty mayors of big cities to say that we had to find a way out of this electoral sequence, but of course in compliance with health rules," said the councilor at the microphone of Europe 1. "We cannot stand still when the country is going to need an economic recovery."
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Democratic support for recovery
For this former Minister of Labor of François Hollande, local elected officials have an essential role to play in restarting the economy, after a sudden shutdown of at least two months. "We know that 70% of public investment comes from local communities and especially from the communal block. It is important that we can participate in this revival," he explains. "It is hard to imagine being able to make heavy decisions in terms of investments without democratic validation, it would even be unthinkable," said François Rebsamen, still at the microphone of Europe 1.
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The organization of this second round remains "reversible", warned Edouard Philippe, if the sanitary conditions at the end of the deconfinement were to deteriorate. Wearing a mask will be compulsory in order to vote. The Prime Minister also acknowledged that the decision to organize this second round at the end of June was not consensus among the political class, the executive having notably consulted the party leaders on this question.