It must also take into account delays in the work in Committee

While initially, the subject should be closed before the next regional elections in March 2010 campaign, the reform of local and regional authorities has now any opportunity to spice up the proceedings. Review by the Council of Ministers of the text of the Bill, already delayed once, from 29 July to early September, could at best occur at the end of the month. "This shift will make us miss the October Senate session," worry Dominique Perben, Member of UMP du Rhône and member of the Balladur Committee who designed the reform called to mark the second part of the mandate of Nicolas Sarkozy.

The high Assembly, constitutionally, to discuss them before the National Assembly, will be taken to court. It should be left to the Council of State, which has yet to be officially seized, the time to decide. It must also take into account delays in the work in Committee. Before these essential preliminary are completed, the Senate will probably already be discussing the draft finance law for 2010 - urgent emergencies - because the National Assembly will likely completed the first reading.

The text, which also deals with the simplification of the intermunicipal landscape, is waiting for the arbitration of the head of State on one of its major provisions, that laying down the procedures for the election of future territorial advisors.

The Elysee must decide

From 2014, the French designate these newly elected in place of the General Councillors and regional councillors. The principle of an electorates in rural townships and a proportional in urban areas, most often advanced until mid-summer, is more vested. Brice Hortefeux, Minister of the Interior, and Alain Marleix, Secretary of State for local communities, grow to a different scenario. The two members of the Government prefer the said model "weill-reynal", the name of a collaborator of the Blum Government. Each Department would be a readjustment of its cantons on the basis of a population standard of the order of 20,000 inhabitants. Territorial Adviser would be elected to the electorates, but additional seats, in a proportion to be determined - it is question of 20 or more of the total of the seats by Department - are also distributed by proportional representation votes cast by all the losers.

The Elysee has yet to decide in favour or disadvantage of this system, which raises some questions, including how to count the votes of the defeated candidates who are not affiliated to a party. Dominique Perben, first to the first scenario, joined this project, which allows a good representation of the rural world. However, he faced opposition.

"This invention is in fact to allow the UMP a hold-up on the largest number of seats to solve the difficult equation which the head of the State party faces today: first party but left very far from being majority with little reserves for a second round", for example considers Christian Favier, the PC President of the General Council of Val-de-Marne.

The prospect of this reform to invite among the major themes at the heart of the campaign of the next regional do would be not without displeasing in the Elysee Palace, attempted to use it as a weapon of reconquest of the regions by the presidential majority. The opportunity also to tighten the ranks, because the reform of the local institutional landscape project is also controversial for the UMP.