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03/01/2014

Iparralde looks for a new local landscape

One of the new features of the French local elections to be held on 23 and 30 March, the first during President François Hollande's term of office, will be that in towns with over a thousand inhabitants - there are 41 of them in Iparralde - there will be closed lists from which the councillors will be elected in proportion to the number of votes for each list. If no list obtains a majority in the first round, the lists which obtain less than 10% will not be able to stand in the second round. On the Tuesday following the first electoral Sunday, the lists must be submitted again in the prefecture and the competing lists may include candidates from the other lists which, owing to circumstances beyond their control or by preference, decide not to stand again.

Another new feature is that the councillors of the association which each municipality forms part of will also be elected on the same ballot paper. Following the debates and demonstrations conducted in favour of the creation of a separate territorial collective for Iparralde, the socialist promises regarding decentralization issues have focussed on the strengthening of the associations or agglomerations, in order to mutualize municipal competences in areas such as transport, economic development and inter-territorial relations. The internal decision on the future political framework of Iparralde will therefore depend to a large extent on the Côte Basque-Adour agglomeration formed by Bidart, Biarritz, Anglet, Boucau and Bayonne, which accounts for most of the population.