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The 26-member Community of Communes of France’s Pays de Gex last week voted in their new president plus a dozen vice-presidents, each with a specific portfolio of responsibility. Playing an increasingly important role in the development of the Lake Geneva region, the Pays de Gex’s Community of Communes now has a crucial task ahead, notably how best to coordinate a broader and more rational urban development vision with its Swiss neighbours. As noted by the new President, Etienne Blanc, mayor of Divonne and a member of the French parliament, the community can speak far more effectively as a group than as individual communes. He also stressed the need for greater transparency. Whether Mr Blanc will indeed succeed in promoting such openness, given the blatant conflicts of interest if not corruption practised by some of the community’s past and present mayors, remains to be seen.

 

Created in 1996, the Community of Communes represents a region at the foot of the French Jura mountains of nearly 68,000 inhabitants. Each of the elected 12 vice-presidents is now in charge of a specific responsibility ranging from transport to finance and security. A relatively recent concept for the region – a 1984 study strongly recommended the creation of Community of Communes in the interests of efficiency – the overall idea is to promote closer collaboration, frank discussion and a more equitable sharing of resources.

Until now, some mayors have tended to run their communes more like personal fiefdoms in the manner of medieval robber-barons and often in complete disregard of their constituents. The Community of Communes is designed to make this more difficult simply by putting all the issues of regional concern on the table.

It is also hoped that local and regional media will monitor far more closely than they have in the past the activities of local mayors and their councils. Many foreigners, but also French, are astonished by the lack of critical reporting over the years by France’s FR3 television network and the Dauphiné Liberé, the regional daily based out of Lyons. Neither have been particularly renowned for undertaking any real investigative journalism into the activities of local councils, particularly those which constitute blatant conflicts of interest. As one communal delegate noted, the regional media prefer “not to shake the boat.”

Only the Gessien, a local weekly, has occasionally clashed with excessive mayors, but the paper’s lack of reporting staff has prevented it for undertaking any persistent form of critical reporting. This needs to change if the current communes are to be held to task.

As a group, the Community of Communes has a distinct advantage to negotiate with the Republic of Geneva and the Canton of Vaud plus the Swiss Federal government. Both the Pays de Gex Community of Communes and that of the Haute Savoy can also learn from each other with regard to new and more appropriate policies for dealing with energy needs, the environment and security, particularly for children.

One element of concern, however, is that a group of international delegates representing various United Nations and other international organizations have been seeking to alert the French mayors to the urgent need of improving public transportation as well as bike paths into Geneva as a means of reducing ever-growing traffic jams and excessive energy costs.

For the moment, barely 4 percent of cross-border commuters living on the French side take public transport. Many parents - but also young people - bitterly complain that buses to and from Geneva, particularly in the evening, are so few and far in between that they must rely on cars to get in and out. (The current campaign by Geneva Public Transport – handing out of travel information at border crossings – does not seem to take into account that it does not help to provide information if the appropriate facilities themselves do not exist.)

The majority of mayors, including, reportedly Etienne Blanc, however, did not seem particularly interested in this international initiative. They said they did not have the funds to embrace improvements, such as bikepaths which are being increasingly - and automatically - built on the Swiss side. However, now with all the public promises made by new municipal line-ups following last month’s local French elections, plus the public resolutions of the new Community of Communities, perhaps this will change.