“Nobody knows what is good for a region better than those who live in it”

The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the French institutional system’s flaws in a particularly evident way. In this country, health, as a competency, belongs to the State. Meanwhile communities, which are “infra-State”, only have a management competency on the matter. This system is very centralised and despite regions’ presidents and mayors having been put on the forefront of crisis management, infra-State entities still are not given the adequate means to handle the crisis properly, as local authorities have weak powers in this unitary decentralised State. An illustration of this is the case of Regional Health Agencies: one would think that regions are the ones co-piloting them, but this is not the case. Regions are not fully associated.

Still, I am convinced that nobody knows what is good for a region better than those who live in it. How many beds are available for resuscitation? How is the epidemic progressing? Where can we open vaccination centres? These questions are handled best by local elected officials, meaning actors on the ground. And in this regard, I believe that French public opinion will remember from this pandemic, on the one hand, numerous hesitations from a State that is sometimes a bit authoritative, and on the other hand, active regions that are closer to citizens.

This raises the question of the best model to handle such crises, as many observers are now looking toward the German model. But I do not think there is a structural model that is preferable to another. What’s more, I do not believe there is better crisis management in those islands or regions that are autonomous either, because efficient management depends quite a lot on conjunctural and ideological elements. For instance, in Spain, during the first wave of the pandemic, the socialist Ministry of Health has really crossed swords with the very conservative president of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, who was reluctant to shut down, isolate: the first wave was complicated in this regard, despite the autonomy. In Italy, in which regions have the competency to manage public health matters, the first wave led to re-centralisation, because central authorities believed regions were not going to be capable of taking care of the distribution of masks and gels. So, both in Italy and in Spain, there has been dysfunction, but for reasons I believe to be mostly political.

To me, this pandemic has rather reminded us that vertical relations between the centre and territories are no longer possible. This is where, probably, the German functioning is interesting: because concertation is taking place in better conditions there. Germany is a country in which there is a weekly meeting between the Chancellor and the presidents of the länders. On the contrary, dialogue and concertation have evidently lacked in France, and beyond. The Collectivity of Corsica, Italian regions and Spanish autonomous communities are all talking about it.

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This op-ed is financially supported by the European Parliament. The European Parliament is not liable for the opinions of the author.

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