European Centre for Research on Federalism

Europäische Länderberichte [European country reports]

Akt II der französischen Dezentralisierung: Konsequenzen für das politische System und die Gesellschaft
[The second act of the French decentralisation: consequences for the political system and the society]

Petra Zimmermann-Steinhart

pp. 219-234

After the ambitious amendment of the constitution in 2003 the decentralisation project of the French government began to falter. The decentralisation was combined with reforms in the area of social policy. Due to the French budgetary gaps, social reforms were more or less equal to reductions of social benefits which created fears, demonstrations, strikes and general prejudices against the decentralisation project. The disapproval was manifested both in the Corsican referendum on a new regional organisation, and in the nation-wide regional elections in March 2004. The government proposal for a special Corsican statute was rejected by the Corsicans in July 2003 due to general reservations about the government and due to specific Corsican reasons. The results of the regional elections in spring 2004 show that national topics were dominating while regional ones were more or less irrelevant. The conservative parties lost the majority in every region except for the Alsace and all regions are now represented by a leftwing majority. The developments in 2003/04 demonstrate once more that France will certainly not develop into a federalized political system and that decentralisation only takes place in a limited way.

Suggested citation for this article:
Zimmermann-Steinhart, Petra 2004: Akt II der französischen Dezentralisierung: Konsequenzen für das politische System und die Gesellschaft, in: Europäisches Zentrum für Föderalismus-Forschung (ed.): Jahrbuch des Föderalismus 2004. Föderalismus, Subsidiarität und Regionen in Europa, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, p. 219-234.