DE GAULLE PLANS LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORM

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31904, 4 February 1969, Page 15

DE GAULLE PLANS LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORM

(N.Z.P.A. -Reuter—Copyright) PARIS, Feb. 3. After years of subdued agitation, local government in France will undergo a major overhaul under the spring national referendum announced by President de Gaulle. The effect of the reform, which creates regional councils for each of the 21 French provinces, will be the transfer to the provinces of a large slice of regional administration currently conducted in Paris. The councils, made up of municipal and general councillors, delegates from economic, social and university circles, and National Assembly Deputies, will take over responsibility for certain investments in their regions. Part of the State Budget will be allowed to them for investment in regional projects, such as schools and i roads, without reference to| Paris.

President de Gaulle, announcing the referendum in a speech at the Breton farm-

ing centre of Quimper yesterday, at the end of his threeday tour of Brittany, described the proposals as “the great reform we must bring to France.”

Although he gave no date for the referendum, political circles here regard March 23 as the most probable. For many years the President has promised the reform of local administration, and i a freer say for the regions lin the organisation of their i own affairs.

For several years he has listened to regional representatives and deputies criticising the excessive centralisation of French administration.

The main complaint is that • the present system is timewasting, for every decision taken at local level has to be referred to the appropriate : Minister in Paris, with con- • sequent long delays. The referendum also gives the President a chance to measure his public standing after his recent statement that he intends to remain in ! power at least until the end ! of his present term. ; In the referendum, electors j will be asked to cast a single ivote covering both the reglional reforms and a change

in the status of the Senate, the Upper House of Parliament.

Observers in Paris see this lumping-together of what might appear to be two completely dissociated projects as an astute political manoeuvre on the part of the Government.

As a traditionalist body, spurned and rejected under the Fifth Republic, the Senate has . tended to be hostile to the Gaullists, who have never been very popular in the countryside. General de Gaulle has argued that the Senate, heavily weighted in favour of the rural areas, has ceased to represent an increasingly urbanised and industrialised country. The effect of the reforms will be to reduce the Senate to a purely consultative body, taking no part in the actual voting of laws.