Visiting Corsica, Gérald Darmanin met the autonomist president of the executive council of Corsica Gilles Simeoni. The latter, at the end of the meeting, considered that “the principle of a status of autonomy and a global political solution” was “acquired” in the mind of the Minister of the Interior. Gérald Darmanin, for his part, made no statement.
“What I remember from this visit by Gérald Darmanin to Corsica is that firstly it is preparatory to the arrival of the President of the Republic” at the end of September, declared Gilles Simeoni after having spoken Thursday morning at the prefecture of Ajaccio with the minister. “What emerges clearly both from the discussions and public positions of the minister and from the exchanges that I was able to have with him, is that in his mind at least, the principle of a status of autonomy and a global political solution is acquired,” assured Gilles Simeoni.
“It now remains […] to first hear and listen to what the President of the Republic will say, then give concrete content to this notion of autonomy,” he added.
Gilles Simeoni insisted that, according to him, the deliberation adopted on July 5 by the nationalists in the Corsican Assembly is “the reference document” of the discussions. This text calls for “legal recognition of the Corsican people”, “a status of co-officiality of the Corsican language” and recognition of the “link between the Corsican people and their land” via “a resident status”. Overall, it requests legislative power in all areas for the Corsican Assembly, except those relating to sovereign powers.
The right-wing minority opposition voted against this text and proposed its own project which concerns a simple “power of adaptation” of French laws to Corsican specificities. Gilles Simeoni said he wanted to “build the broadest possible consensus to obtain an autonomous status for Corsica, to obtain a global political solution and to commit Corsica irreversibly to the path of peace and emancipation”.
On Wednesday, Gérald Darmanin called on Corsican elected officials to political pragmatism, recalling that a possible “institutional political compromise” must be adopted “by 3/5ths of the Congress”. After the fatal attack in prison in 2022 of independence activist Yvan Colonna and the violent demonstrations that followed, the government opened the possibility of discussions that could “go as far as autonomy.”
