Minister of Defense’s First Official Visit to the United States
French Minister of Defense, Michèle Alliot-Marie, will be in Washington D.C. on October 16 and 17 for her first official visit since she was appointed four months ago. As France’s first female Minister of Defense, and one of only two in NATO (the other being Norway’s Kristin Krohn-Devold), she will preside over the most significant increase in
French defense spending since the end of the Cold War.
France’s determination to uphold its rank as one of the leading Western military powers, and as one of America’s key strategic partners, will be among the topics discussed with her American counterpart, Donald Rumsfeld. She is also scheduled to meet with many other top government officials, including Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and the President’s National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice.
As well as presenting France’s new defense program, Michèle Alliot-Marie will discuss ways to further strengthen military ties between both countries. High-level U.S. officers have already thanked France, America’s oldest ally, for its key participation in Afghanistan- where French planes flew the second highest number of sorties and provided ground support for U.S. special forces- and for its crucial assistance in the Ivory Coast crisis. Both nations agree that more transatlantic cooperation is vital in order to meet today’s increasingly complex security challenges.
Michèle Alliot-Marie, a lawyer by profession, also has a master’s degree in ethnology. She is the author of several books on France’s society and political institutions. She has led a distinguished public career, having served as a long-time member of the French National Assembly and the European Parliament. And this is by no means her first stint in government, as she was Minister of State for Teaching and headed the Ministry of Youth and Sport under previous administrations.
For more information, please visit the Ministry of Defense’s website at http://www.defense.gouv.fr/english/index_ang.html.
Decentralization: changing the face of government in France
The government headed by Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has submitted a major proposal to France’s Conseil d’Etat (Council of State) and Conseil des ministres (Council of ministers) to enshrine wide-scale administrative decentralization in the country’s constitution. It will later be the subject of parliamentary debate in France’s National Assembly.
If it is implemented, the 10-part draft proposal would constitute the most radical change in France’s overall mode of government since the first decentralization reforms in 1982. Significantly, the first article of the constitution would be amended to include a disposition stipulating that the Republic of France’s “organization is decentralized”.
Most of the modifications envisioned by the Prime Minister and his team are based upon ideas introduced as part of President Jacques Chirac’s electoral campaign platform. Chirac was quoted in Le Monde daily newspaper, for instance, as having pledged, on April 10, to “rethink boldly the architecture of [governmental] power by way of a global, coherent project.”
The draft aims to include in the constitution full and final recognition of France’s regions as functional administrative entities in their own right, along with “communes” (counties), “départements” (districts) and overseas “collectivités”.
It explicitly paves the way for such collectivities-be they regions, counties, districts or overseas territories-to ask to govern themselves directly in domains deemed to be of particular local relevance. It would also permit the use of local referendums in a decisive, rather than merely consultative, capacity. This would allow local authorities on all levels to establish a greater degree of financial and general decision-making autonomy. The draft’s proposed change in constitutional language expressly prioritizes progress towards a decentralized State, where local government wields as much authority as it can competently and effectively exercise.
Such devolutionary measures would be backed up by specific changes to the constitution ensuring that local authorities receive adequate funding. These amendments stipulate that for every transfer of responsibility to a local government entity, the
funds previously earmarked by the central government to run the corresponding programs must
automatically follow.
One of the most progressive features of the draft is that it would allow legislative or regulatory “experiments” of finite duration in any one collectivity; the results of which, if positive, could lead to similar dispositions being introduced on the national level. The local experimentation process is intended to bring about a more flexible, creative and pragmatic approach to reform, enabling lawmakers to take more initiatives, test their suggestions’ real potential and see them adopted more readily and easily if their merit is proven.
Finally, France’s overseas collectivities would most likely see their legislative status and degree of self-determination enhanced, with a constitutional right to determine specific regulations, or exemption from existing regulations in effect in mainland France, for their inhabitants. The text of the proposal even allows, under certain as-yet-undefined circumstances, for the possibility of such collectivities passing their own laws.
For more information, please consult http://www.premier-ministre.gouv.fr.
