Administrative millefeuille: why nothing is moving

France likes to accumulate layers, as well as reports on the need to simplify the administrative millefeuille. In May 2024 alone, MP Éric Woerth and Mayor Boris Ravignon published two separate studies on the tangle of skills. However, almost nothing moves. For what ? Because of the lack of perspective of our leaders, believes Benoît Perrin, the general director of the Taxpayers Association association: “Reforming the millefeuille would require considerable and time-consuming work, as things have become so complex. However, our politicians only want to pursue short-term policies, with immediately visible results. » The mayor of Charleville-Mézières also denounces the clientelist logic of many elected officials, who have an interest in not seeing things move: “The more elected officials there are, the more strata there are, and therefore positions and positions. salaries to be distributed. Everyone holds on to their goatees. »

The political scientist Romain Pasquier incriminates the Senate. This tends to block any territorial reform. “The senators are mainly elected by municipal councilors from municipalities with less than a thousand inhabitants, therefore rural. They really appreciate the department. They refuse to remove this level. » General de Gaulle had identified this blockage.

In 1969, the president attempted to make the Senate a powerless chamber by organizing a referendum on the subject. The negative vote of the French pushes him to resign. “France is an old conservative country, with very few reformers in its history,” believes Romain Pasquier. There are only political blows to be taken in launching a territorial reform. The unions and associations of elected officials will rise up against you. » Boris Ravignon, for his part, denounces the reluctance of the State to give up its powers: “Governments in France are statist. They believe that the State knows everything, can everything and must do everything. And they think that communities are only messy and spendthrift levels. » And too bad if the figures for public debt, essentially owed to the State, say the opposite.