Emmanuel Macron had promised, the text was adopted by Parliament. When he received the mayors of the municipalities most affected by the riots in early July, the Head of State assured them that a bill on the financing of post-riot reconstruction would quickly be put in place. Thing done with this final adoption, Thursday, July 20, by Parliament, after a unanimous vote of the Senate
The text was approved without change at the Palais-Bourbon by 260 votes for, 87 against, and 59 abstentions, which is worth final validation, in record time under this legislature. According to the Minister of Territorial Cohesion Christophe Béchu, the bill makes it possible to “respond in a concrete and limited way not to the causes, but to the consequences of the riots” which followed the death of young Nahel, killed by the shooting of a police officer during a road check in Nanterre on June 27.
MPs from the National Rally were the only ones to vote against, criticizing that “the scum destroys and the French pay”. The elected officials of La France insoumise abstained, deploring the absence of “immaterial response” to the rioters, in the words of Raquel Garrido. The Minister postponed this substantive subject to the next school year.
The left-wing deputies tirelessly defended dozens of amendments to further reduce the time for reconstruction, to avoid having to empower the government to legislate by ordinance, or to mention in the text of the law “intentional homicide” of Nahel, according to the wish of the Insoumis. They have drawn the wrath of the presidential camp. “Do not come and act as firefighters after having acted as arsonists and accomplices of arsonists”, Christophe Béchu told them, in reference to LFI’s refusal to explicitly call for appeasement during the violence.
On the far right, Marine Le Pen accused the Insoumis of coming “to vomit [their] hatred of the police” and to use “any pretext to justify the riots”. The leader of the RN group did not spare the presidential majority: “You are constantly trying to make what happened invisible”, she criticized, after presenting on Wednesday a battery of measures for “a republican start”.
Main complaint of the RN group on the bill: State and communities will finance the reconstructions, which should be “exclusively borne by the thugs and their families”. For elected LRs too, “it’s not up to the French to pay the bill”. But the right-wing group voted for the executive’s text, asking for justice to pass.
In detail, the bill includes three articles authorizing the government to act by order to accelerate the reconstruction of public or private buildings, degraded or destroyed. The first provides for adaptations of the town planning code, for identical reconstructions or with improvements, for example environmental. Preparatory work such as earthworks can be undertaken without waiting for planning permission. Article 2 concerns public procurement: there will be a competition but no prior advertising below a threshold which would be 1.5 million euros, according to Christophe Béchu. The last article adapts the framework applicable to subsidies paid to local authorities. It opens the possibility of a zero charge for communities and will allow them to recover VAT within the year, without waiting for the current two years.
