Local Government reform in France
OK, not the most exciting title for a post, but an interesting article in Le Monde (original here) discusses Jacques Attali’s proposal to abolish departments - the French level of local government roughly equivalent to an English county - and distribute powers to regions and groups of communes. It won’t surprise those who’ve watched English local government reform in action that there’s been a big negative reaction to the proposal from existing departmental councillors. The specifically French twist on this is that because of the custom of cumul des mandats, whereby MPs often have local government offices as well, large numbers of MPs and Senators are also serving departmental councillors, and are therefore unlikely to push forward any changes.