• The town hall of Nantes offered its elected officials and its cabinet several workshops led by a therapist.

  • Several press articles present them as “esoteric” seminars, which the city denies.

“Esoteric personal development”, “strange coaching sessions”… In recent days, several press articles, taking up information from the satirical newspaper

La Lettre à Lulu

, accuse the Nantes town hall of having financed mystical seminars for its elected officials. According to

L'Express

, three times were organized, one for the firm in 2018 and the other two in the fall of 2020, to weld the new team of the municipal majority. “External aid” necessary after the PS-EELV agreement, and the governance difficulties of the previous mandate,

Médiacités

specified in February

on this subject.

In addition to the cost of these trainings, which would be around 20,000 euros, the article in

L'Express

 implicates the host of these sessions, the former elected EELV Jean-Philippe Magnen.

According to the newspaper, the therapist would be inspired by strange methods, and in particular "active meditation according to Osho", the latter being described as "the most controversial of the star gurus of the sexual revolution".

An exercise aimed at "improving the personality of leaders, by releasing the multiple facets of personal potential", called "The game of the King and the Queen", would also have been proposed.

No spiritual character, according to the town hall

So, esotericism or a simple team-building method?

"Bassem Asseh, first deputy mayor of Nantes, formally denied to the journalists who wrote these papers the esoteric and spiritual nature of these working times", answers the town hall, requested by

20 Minutes

.

If the city confirms the existence of these three formations as well as their cost, of 20,389 euros, it affirms that they were intended to "structure the collective dynamic" and "to define the objectives of mandate".

These workshops were organized "in accordance with the public procurement code" specifies the town hall, which called on "two professionals in collective animation and support for change", including Jean-Philippe Magnen.

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  • Controversy

  • Psychology

  • Town hall

  • Johanna rolland

  • Nantes