“The State had never come to help Marseille so strongly“, reacted, Wednesday on franceinfo, Benoît Payan, the mayor of the second city of France.”I say thank you to the state“, he insisted.
A reaction that comes the day after the Prime Minister’s visit to the Phocaean city, which notably obtained an extension for the renovation of 174 schools, bringing the State’s contribution from 254 to 400 million euros out of the total of 1 , 2 billion euros of the plan for Marseille, announced in September by Emmanuel Macron. “There is a considerable financial effort from the State“, says the mayor of Marseille.
Benoît Payan assures us that “the work will be completed in 80 [écoles] in 2026 and the next 90 will be over the next five to six years“. Because, recalls the elected,”we need it. It’s not cosmetic, it’s not paint. It’s a catastrophic state“. This acceleration of the school renovation schedule will be made possible by the fact that”The state will guarantee the loans of the city of Marseille for 650 million euros“, indicates the elected Marseille.”It is important for me because when I go to a bank and I have the guarantee of the State, I lower the interest rates and I earn money for the Marseillaises and the Marseillais“.
Benoît Payan says to himself “moved” because “when we do politics we believe in things and often we are told ‘you’ll see, you won’t get there, that’s the order of things, you have to be resilient’. When we believe in something and it is sometimes crazy and we move forward, and we manage to achieve it, necessarily there is emotion. Of course we are moved when we manage to do that“.
For Benoît Payan, “the question is not to burn the cash register“, in reaction to the accusations made by the LR presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse.”Do you think that a country that puts money in its schools is a country that burns money?“he asked.
“To be able to implement the plan for Marseille, we have to work together. In one year, we managed to move forward on subjects, to put them in place, to have them financed, to have them voted by the National Assembly and to sign a contract on Tuesday, December 14.“said Benoît Payan on franceinfo.