President Emmanuel Macron announced more than a thousand billion investments for Marseille, the “fractured” second city of France.
“I do not come to make promises but to adopt commitments,” said the head of state.
In a speech interrupted by a storm and a sound failure, Macron, without losing the smile, promised a rain of millions that must end the ghettos and convert Marseille into a first-class European metropolis.
Three days of visit accompanied by seven ministers to define “Marseille to the Great”.
Macron first attacked the “emergencies”.
In front of the traffickers, he promised “police harassment”, one hundred police officers this year, two hundred, next one;
A new police barracks (150 million euros) and 500 surveillance cameras to install in the northern neighborhoods where the drug imposes its law.
In addition, more means for justice because “Living quiet is a right”.
Second urgency, sanitary, 169 million to renew hospitals and another 50 for a new motherhood.
Third, social, rehabilitate 10,000 homes in 15 years.
Here it was short because 41,000 social housing plaintiffs expect response.
In addition, the subway will be automated, four tram lines and five bus will be created.
But “the emergencies are not enough to build the future.”
And that happens by recovering schools and “ending absenteeism” launched Macron to Mayor.
At this point a storm forced the president to ask for an umbrella and interrupt his speech.
Macron proposed “to invent the school of the future”.
The President promised that 50 new schools and schools, with innovative educational projects, different learning rhythms and adjacent cultural and sports premises, will be launched for the next course.
“If the results are positive, the project will be generalized.”
A company ad hoc presided over by the mayor will take care of rehabilitating 174 schools.
The icing, various projects related to the cultural industry anchored in the cinema, such as the creation of the greatest studies of the Mediterranean and a dock to shoot at sea.
“Helping Marseille is helping the whole country, I come with great ambition and a lot of humility,” he said alluding the failures of his predecessors.
And he asked for unity to local politicians whose rivalry is legendary.
So far the future pluscumerfect designed by Macron, now reality …
Marseille is a ruined city.
In November 2018, two properties collapsed in the heart of the city, leaving eight dead.
On July 17, three young Nigerian immigrants died in the intentional fire of a block of skilled social housing waiting for rehabilitation.
Marseille is a corroded city for drug trafficking, where the bands fight for controlling the points of sale, installed in the blocks of the northern neighborhoods, where the police do not venture but it is in planned operations.
Account adjustments, resolved at Kalashnikov shots, have cost 10 lives this summer which raises the number of dead in the year to 14, rather than 2020 but away from the record of 2016 when they perished 29 people.
Marseille has censored 868,000 inhabitants in a municipality of 240 square km, twice as Paris.
And two subway lines that travel 35 km and date from 1977. Lyon is 94 km from Metro (and tram);
Bordeaux, 68 and Lille, 67. Not to say that the two million Parisians have 13 metro lines.
Schools are in a calamitous state.
In fact, the president visited one to whose sports clearance had several tiles of the roof.
Parents denounce classes without heating, rats.
A third of the 444 school centers in the municipality need deep and urgent reforms.
Marseille had a right-wing mayor, Jean Claude Gaudin, for 25 years accused of dealing with only the bourgeois neighborhoods.
Socialists governed before with another prohammer, Gastón Deferre.
And control the metropolitan government that brings together two million people.
The President of the Association ‘Marseille in Cholera’ denounces that to receive social help, do not say a public job, “you have to have brought the suitcases of the party in power.”
Clientelism reaches the port, controlled by the Acindic Communist Union (CGT).
It was the most important of the Mediterranean and today goes behind Valencia and Genoa.
In the first round of the presidential 2017, Marseille won the Candidate of Extreme Left, Jean Luc Mélechon, followed by the leader of the extreme right, Marine Le Pen.
Macron, was third.
So he has a territory to win in 2022, in which no one doubts that he will attend.
For this, the candidate Macron needs, not only the money announced by President Macron, also the window of opportunity.
This was opened, paradoxically, with the victory of the left coalition in the last municipalities.
After some maneuver, the mayor was at the hands of Benoît Payan, a socialist of 43, the same as the head of state.
The EDIL visited the Elysee on March 10 to invite the President to the World Congress of Nature, which Macron opens on Saturday, the third day of the longest visit of his mandate to a city.
Third ecological leg after security (police, judges) and social (transport and schools).
The opposition denounces “electoralism”.
Analysts talk about “occupying the land”.
On the right, from the left and the greens.
On that visit, between Mayor Payan and the president spent the current.
Macron has always said that “Marseille is the city of him”.
In fact, he is a fan of Olympique, as he could see all the children with whom he has chatted.
The Edil said that “there is no love but evidence of love,” he asked a billion for schools, and he has them.
But Macron is going to tie it short, since he announced a calendar of follow-up visits.
Payan spoke before Macron’s speech before the elite of the city and some guests as the OM player, Payet.
He described the visit of “Historic”, evoked the genealogy of the Villa, and its successive refugees and emigrated layers.
“The State must rely on Marseille,” the Edil asked.
