Press release :
Towards economic and financial self-rule for Occitan regions as a step towards the independence of
Occitania
Alain Rousset (French Socialist Party), President of the Aquitaine Regional Council, in a speech
about the financial participation of local authorities (regions and departments) in the building of a new high-speed line between Bordeaux and Toulouse, questioned the government. He requested it
to take into account the difficult financial situation of the departments and the regions affected by this controversial project. For local officials, the objective is to open up the Aquitaine
and Midi-Pyrénées regions by making them reachable from Paris much more quickly. On the other hand for the Occitan Nation Party, it is important that they should cease being obsessed with Paris.
What is really at stake is to open up part of Occitania on the Bordeaux-Nice route by extending the high-speed line to Montpellier, Marseille and Nice and by linking it with Barcelona and the
other neighbouring European regions. This cannot be done in the sole interest of major Occitan urban centres and leave aside medium-sized towns as well as the centre and the North of Occitania.
Instead of exclusively relying on high-speed trains, existing railway lines should be upgraded to enable them to accommodate an increasing number of travellers and to develop piggy-back
transport.
M. Rousset is right to link this project and regional development with local finance reform. Like François Hollande, he
advocates to grant some financial autonomy to local authorities and to carry on with decentralization. The Occitan Nation Party believes we should go much farther. We need truly self-ruling
regions economically and fiscally speaking, this involves in particular the power to levy taxes and to return a negotiated part of them to the central power. In the current context characterized
by a decrease in the State’s financial involvement, financial and fiscal self-rule may well amount to making do with a diminishing state grant. The example set by German economic dynamism shows
that true self-rule can only work in a federal framework, not in an over-centralized framework as in France. The Occitan Nation Party comes down in favour of home-rule for Occitan regions in a
French and European federal framework as a step towards the creation of an independent Occitan federal republic.
February 17th, 2012
Occitan Nation Party
10 rue de Romas
F- 47000 Agen(Occitania)
+33 6 76 47 32 12
joan.peire.alari@gmail.com
http://www.p-n-o.org