Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin went to Corsica at the beginning of February 2023 to discuss a new status for the island; seven months later, he returned for a two-day visit to meet the mayors.
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Gérald Darmanin will participate in the general assembly of mayors of Corsica on September 13 and 14, 2023. He will also be received by the president of the executive, the autonomist Gilles Simeoni. The tenant of Place Beauvau is eagerly awaited. The negotiations between the government and the island’s elected officials are turning into a dialogue of deaf people. The objective is to create a new status for the island. Except that missed appointments, canceled trips, and postponed meetings keep coming and the process is at a standstill.
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Different visions of autonomy coexist on the island
Corsican elected officials were waiting for a road map from Paris. Emmanuel Macron asked them to agree on common proposals. At the beginning of July, a majority of the Corsican Assembly, bringing together all the autonomist currents, adopted a motion which calls for the granting of extensive legislative power, except in sovereign domains, but also the “legal recognition of the Corsican people” or even a status of “co-officiality for the Corsican language”.
Except that a minority, the right-wing opposition, is opposed to it and is demanding a simple “power to adapt French laws to Corsican specificities”. As a result, two different texts were sent to Paris. Emmanuel Macron, for his part, was content to set two red lines: Corsica will remain in the Republic and the Corsicans will not benefit from a specific resident status.
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The government launched this process urgently, in the spring of 2022. A few weeks before the presidential election, it was a question of restoring calm at all costs while the island had been shaken by riots after the death of Yvan Colonna, the assassin of prefect Érignac, killed in prison by a radicalized inmate. “No taboo” then repeated Gérard Darmanin who had even mentioned the prospect of autonomy.
Since then, the government seems to want to buy time. The elected islanders are struggling. Disappointed by their elders, a fringe of young nationalist activists threatens to plunge back into violence. And Corsica, governed for eight years by the autonomists, is falling behind economically. In the summer of 2023, it is even the only French region to have seen a clear decline in the tourist season.