Corsican Autonomy: Government Ignores Council of State Opinion on Constitutional Bill

Political consensus rather than law. The government ultimately chose not to follow the advice of the Council of State by not removing a single comma from the constitutional bill on Corsican autonomy. This text, which is to be presented to the Council of Ministers on Wednesday, July 30, could grant the island legislative power – with the exception of sovereign subjects – and set in stone the notion of “historical, linguistic, cultural community having developed a unique link with its land” , which underlies the notion of “Corsican people”.

The Rubicon was crossed on July 22 by the Minister of Regional Planning and Decentralization, François Rebsamen, in charge of the file, who had invited around fifteen Corsican elected officials to finalize the presentation of the project before the Council of Ministers at the end of July and then the examination, in the autumn, by parliamentarians.

After four hours of discussions, Mr. Rebsamen came up against the refusal of the president of the Corsican executive, Gilles Simeoni, to follow certain modifications suggested by the Council of State, unless it would result in an "unacceptable regression." "The Council of State, whose opinion is advisory, would like to replace the notion of "community" with that of "population" by removing its link to the land, while it is the basis of the law which then opens the way to the creation of a Corsican resident status," Mr. Simeoni justified to Le Monde . "Not to mention that it suggests a posteriori control by Parliament of the laws ratified by the Assembly of Corsica ," he added. "That would no longer be autonomy." Most of the Corsican representatives present aligned themselves with this position.

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