2013' shades of grey

2013 ended on Tuesday under a dark, low and rainy sky. After the windy weather the city experienced the previous days, heavy clouds obstructed any sunbeam to appear as if the current year had nothing good to give. Altough the Christmas illumations are still in position, the Ralliement square wooden huts are closed, leaving pedestrians as orphans. The items people were eager to buy to make gifts will be discounted soon as if, with the new year, the values of the old one had already vanished.

The electoral campaign, which accelerated with the multipli-cations of the candidacies, put in paren-thesis. But next week, the truce will be over and adversaries will again compete with proposals for 2014 and the five following years. The common will of all them all is to strenghen the attractiveness of the city. The most visible scheme is about the Maine banks. It aims to gather the city around its river and make its banks more accessible to inhabitants. Another one is taking shape near Saint-Laud railway station and looks to take care of visitors coming to Angers for business. While the Maine banks scheme is designed to embellish the city, the Gare+ scheme, wants to make Angers more connected to national and region decision centres.

The first building of that new district, a car park rather unsighty because its surroundings are far from complete, has been erected in 2013 and other facilities are planned. The place, where in a few months works about an hotel, offices and housings will be started, looks more to a no man's land than a window display for Angers. But, from the worst, the best may surge. And if from the top of the building the city was rather unpleasant to contemplate on December 31, new hopes and assets will come from the ground and the sky. Happy New Year!

26th European First Film Festival : Lights... Camera... Action

A quarter of a century! Launched in 1989, the European First Films Festival, planned in Angers from January 17th to 26th, will be in its 26th edition. In twenty five years, around 3 700 films including 1 600 first works have been screened. Last year, some 70 000 filmgoers were part of the event which, year after year, highlighted numerous young directors who, later, became famous like Arnaud Desplechin, Paolo Sorrentino or Thomas Vinterberg.

During the 2014 edition, more than 70 films will be screened in six official categories : European features films, French features films, European short films, French short films, student films and animated films. Two thousands euros in awards will be given out by juries and the public at the end of the festival. A selection of films out of competition will be also presented in four categories : free style (first works made without any restrictions), next shots (films that were made by filmmakers discovered at Premiers Plans) and a selection of short and feature Chinese films dicovered at the Beiging First Film festival. Moreover, since 1991, the event has introduced public audiences to the work of young screenwriters with the readings of French scripts for first features.

Many local authorities and companies are involved in the festival and finance the € 200 000 awards : the city of Angers, the Maine-et-Loire general council, the Angers Ccas, Angers University, the Western Catholic University, Comec, Eolane and Scania. The composition of the jury will be disclosed in early January.

The metamorphosis is the topic of the 2014 edition. The festival gives the opportunity to discover film history and heritage thanks to retrospectives on national cinematographies, tributes to major and unrecognized authors and actors. One of them will be paid to Patrice Chéreau, French opera and theatre director, filmaker, actor and producer, native from the Angers region, who died last october. He was a partner of the festival. The Premiers Plans festival will also revive the Gaumont Variétés which closed its doors last October what illustrates that the city cinemas could become undersized if the event were due to become more important.

Saturday night, fever has gone

The Christmas atmosphere has left Ralliement square. On Saturday night, fever was going away, mobile shops owners were packaging their items, leaving behind them their little wooden huts. Those will soon move and the Ralliement square will become once again the heart, a little bit cold, of the town. From now, pedestrians who used to walk throughout the little village which enlived their weekends, will be able to compare the attractiveness of the place with and without opened stores.

Through the end of year market, the last weeks saw the issue of Sundays openings back in the front news. Christophe Béchu, after he suggested an equal numbers of Sundays opened, for mobile and settled stores (two per year), triggered the hostility of all shops owners. Those who come just for a month, with five Sundays opened, said that in that hypothesis, their presence would become impossible, because of the loss of turnover. The cafes and restaurants warned they would also suffer a lack of customers during the last Sundays of the year. Because of the municipal campaign, the deputy-mayor in charge of commerce, Jacques Motteau, forerly favourable to restrictive Sundays openings, expressed quickly a critic against such an idea and announced something would have to be studied.

The risk of the shutdown of mobile stores most of the Sundays of December looks unthinkable. But the implementation of a new vision of the down town attractiveness looks necessary. If the idea of a new commercial gallery where the post office is located opens new perspectives, it will not be feasible unless a complete new deal about the conditions of commerce in Angers down town : accesses, car par fares and schedules are the first questions to consider... before next Christmas.

No gift for Christmas on employment front

Sant Claus didn't brought any parcel on the front of unemployment. The number of joblesses increased by 0.6% during November in Maine-et-Loire after a decrease has been recorded for the previous month. Even though figures are not known for Angers and surroundings, it is now clear that such an economic and social issue will remain at the core of the electoral campaign in the month to come.

The topic was reminded to Frédéric Béatse and Christophe Béchu, both of them candidates to the Angers municipal elections and both of them said that they were only able to gather the most favourable conditions to attract companies and jobs pointing out they were not entrusted to act in place of business launchers. Both of them want to act on the positioning of Angers as a reference in the botanic sector and thinks a new design of the town around a symbol of nature - the Maine river - is appropriate.

But, beyond that point, people feel that their local representatives are rather powerless about the economic issues. These are, for each of them, the main adversary in the next municipal elections and may encourage people to abstention or even not to fit into the electoral roll, a phenomena all the candidates want to avoid. The success of the encouragements they published on their website in favor of the registration of people on the electoral roll would be for them a Christmas gift.

Servir Angers wants the Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport scheme to land in the electoral campaign

While the Pays de la Loire prefecture has recently published several regulations about the start of the works regarding Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport, that facility comes back in the Angers electoral debate thanks to the Servir Angers platform. That one, which supports the Union des démocrates indépendants (Udi) candidate, Laurent Gérault, considers the implementation of such a scheme would severely damage Angers interests.

"What has been planned for Angers? Nothing until today. What will be the consequences in land settlement, railways and roads, balance between territories? Nothing has been planned for Angers, 2nd city of the region" points out Nicolas Cocuaud, one of the (next) Mr. Gérault's running mates, himself involved in the Collectif des citoyens angevins contre le projet d’aéroport de Notre-Dame-des-Landes and in Greenpeace. "This is a major stake for the Angevins' future and so, for the municipal elections", warns Mr. Cocuaud.

According to several political organizations supporting Laurent Gérault in his campaign, the scheme is also

Nicolas Cocuaud (Credit picture : Servir Angers)

ill-timed with the current situation of public finances which, already, leads to freeze many projects. About one year ago, the Notre-Dame-des-Landes scheme had been regularly criticized by its opponents through demonstrations in Angers down town and even an interruption of the New year wishes ceremony last January.

Left and right will visit Terra Botanica... accounts

The economic situation of Terra Botanica, the amusement and botanical park located in Angers and opened in 2010, will be, in the weeks to come, audited in its financial aspects and about the positioning of its image. Through that facility, the Conseil général intended to provide to the Maine-et-Loire a "locomotive" to stimulate the development of tourism. But, more than three years after it started, the recorded attendance is not as important as planned (the 2013 figures would have decreased by 8% in comparison with the previous year). In order to reduce the tensions on the financial balance, the Conseil général has given up the cashing of the rent, € 200 000 per year.

Credit pictures : Terra Botanica

In a presse release, the Angers deputy-mayor in charge of commerce, Jacques Motteau, and the Ponts-de-Cé mayor, Joël Bigot, greeted the announ-cement of the audit ordered by Terra Botanica president, Jean-Pierre Chavassieux. Terra Botanica is managed by a company whose capital is owned by local authorities and, among them, the city of Angers and the Conseil général. The issue, especially if the results of the audit are not favourable, could become a polemic in the municipal campaign, or because it's the municipal campaign.

The issue was already discussed during a recent meeting of the Conseil général dedicated to financial purposes. So the supporters of the current Angers mayor in and outside that authority could seize the opportunity to criticize Christophe Béchu's financial management.

Angers inhabitants opened to the end of year Sunday stores openings

Even if the final appraisals of the authorization given by Angers city to the settled stores to open two Sundays before Christmas are not drawn, it will be impossible for the next mayor to go back on the decision because of the crowd of inhabitants in the streets and in the shops of down town on December 22nd. The atmosphere was lively, in
spite of the weather and the economic situation, and in any case, totally different from the mood of the city on ordinary Sundays when stores are closed.

They were thousands of people in the central district and especially around the mobile wooden huts which, visibly, attract a lot of customers and pedestrians - as well as turnover - what benefits to neighbouring settled stores. Those, whatever be the items they sell, recorded a good attendance because - as all economic books teach it - the offer creates its own demand. So a lot of customers were looking for the gift of last-minute for kids and adults. 

None of the candidates to Angers mayor office will be able to forbid the wooden huts to open only two Sundays in December because these days are among the most profitable of the period given the Angers households do not work. The Servir Angers list understood it very well and in a press release promised it will maintain that principle for which inhabitants have already vote for, with their feet.

Angers centrifugal forces

The Udi delegate Laurent Gérault (right)

The Angers centrists will go divided to the 2014 municipal elections. While the national decision-makers of the Mouvement démocrate (Modem) decided to join Christophe Béchu, the Union pour une majorité populaire candidate, the Union des démocrates indépendants (Udi) president, Jean-Louis Borloo, officialy supported the candidacy of Laurent Gérault, his delegate in Maine-et-Loire. So Modem, behind Mr. Béchu, and Udi will fight on the first round of municipal elections. If Modem and Udi decided to be allied at a national level under the brand "L'Alternative", that alliance will not be implemented in Angers.

Bernard Dupré,  Angers Modem

"It is not the alliance [of the Modem] with Ump which disturbs us because that is consistent with what has been done since five years. No what is disturbing it's the centrist forces, Udi and Modem, are scattered", says Laurent Gérault. The Modem which, a few weeks ago, disclosed that the final decision was the responsability of the national level, explained finally that "The decision was based on the choices made up by their Maine-et-Loire members" and pointed out that "Christophe Béchu is the only one able to embody a new vision and to carry the hope of a new policy for Angers".

The Ump Christophe Béchu

But it also reminded that "the Maine-et-Loire centre can only be strong only if it is fully gathered", what is currently far to be effective. Mr Borloo's support for Mr. Gérault was as clear as the Modem's one in favour of Mr. Béchu. "I'm convinced that Laurent Gérault will be able to carry a humanist, modern and ambitious project in order to match with Angevins and Angevines' worries", he said.

But things are not simple because some of the Modem supporters decided to rally to Laurent Gérault, while others of Udi choose to go with Christophe Béchu... If all of them considers the Maine-et-Loire needs centrists, the Maine-et-Loire centrists do not need each others.

The wooden huts worried by an equal footing with settled stores regarding Sundays openings

One of the proposals of Christophe Béchu, who leads the Union pour une majorité populaire list in the next municipal elections has triggered a negative answer from the Christmas huts owners set up in down town every end of year. Mr. Béchu would plan to treat on an equal footing those mobile retailers and the settled stores of Angers regarding the Sundays openings : two Sundays per year would be authorized. If the opportunity the settled store owners got to open two Sundays before Christmas was considered by them as a "historical victory", such a possibility would be for the wooden huts managers a tough and maybe insurmountable handicap which may decide them to go away definitly.

A recent store owner's idea attracted... traffic

In order to avoid such a prospect, and to give satisfaction to settled store owners, Mr. Béchu can only decide to let all of them open their doors five Sundays per week. Such a policy would be fair among the two categories of stores : mobile and setlled. Why the latter, which are there all year long, would not get the right to open like the mobile huts which are there only a month per year? The idea of the candidate also worried some of the settled stores around or close to the Ralliement square : the restaurants and cafés where a lot of people come in for a meal or a drink when there is, thanks to wooden huts and the merry-go-round, hustle and bustle around
Ralliement square.

In his website, the candidate spoke only about the idea of allowing the openings of down town stores two
Sundays per year and publicly said that he was not, like his challengers, favourable to go beyond. Stores' turnovers and customers'behaviour would nevertheless push in that way.

Christophe Béchu introduces his "business plan" for Angers down town stores

Credit picture : Angers Loire Métropole

Christophe Béchu, Union pour une majorité populaire (Ump) candidate to Angers mayor office, is accelerating the pace of his campaign on economic issues. On December 20th, he will meet the Angers business men about "the future of the territory and the first proposals to stimulate the employment and the economic dynamism". But just before, he published on his website his ideas to "Galvanize the commerce in down town and re-establish the relationships with retail store owners". Mr. Béchu puts forward four fields in which he will act during the next term

Credit Picture : Angers Béchu

"To renew the dialog with store owners" is the first. Considering the last years saw the break-up of the relationship between the city council and those managers, the candidate promises he will dedicate the revenues of the stores names tax (550 000 €/year) to the animation of shops in that district. He also plans to enlarge the Leclerc car park in order to give to the down town employees a specific space to their own cars. In another field ("To stimulate the commerce in down town"), the candidate aims at the widening the core of the town towards the Foch boulevard on one side and to the Maine banks on the other thank to the new square he wants to settle near the river. Moreover a no charged first car park hour will be instituted to attract customers.

Credit Picture : Angers Béchu

That stimulation of commerce, Christophe Béchu want to trigger it in the core of the different angers districts : all their central squares will be re-designed and cash dispensers will be set up there (what could make necessary an agreement with the banks). Regarding the last field (the stimulation of the commercial offer), Mr. Béchu wants new (and English sounding) brands be present in Angers (like a Kfc fast food or a Starbuck coffee). The Aimer Angers list considered that plan is "has been because it forces the city to match the car traffic requirements".

A new ranking favourable to the Angers university for the professional insertion of its students

A new survey published on December 18th by the French ministry of higher education has delivered, once again, a ranking favourable to the Angers university regarding the professional insertion of its students 30 months after the completion of their cursus. The degree of professional insertion is generally important for former Angers students whatever be the contents of their education.

In letters, arts and languages, the proportion of students having a job is 83% while in sciences and technology, that rate is 90%. Better results have been recorded in law, economy and management (91%) and above all in human and social sciences : 30 months after the end of their studies, 92% of the former students had a job.

Curiously, the late survey puts Angers in a specific position. While the French students involved in a scientific cursus generaly are the best incorportated in the active life, the lowest proportion recorded by Angers is in that field. Nevertheless, that survey confirms previous inquiries having demonstrated that the Angers university was one of the most efficient in France for its proportion of students having got their licence three years after the strat of the higher education cursus.

Maine banks settlement : the candidates make their stands

Credit Pictures : Grether-Phytolab

Anlysis and facts confirm that the opposition between the platforms of Frédéric Béatse and Christophe Béchu will be focused on the Maine banks reconquest scheme. As mayor, the first, who considers that project is necessary to stenghen the attractiveness of the city, is about to introduce to the city council new works included in that scheme that would be implemented next year : the surroundings of the Angers rowing base, the Bout du Monde walkway and the plane trees alley of the La Rochefoucault square.

The same day, the tv channef Tf1 published on his website that "the major stake of the municipal elections is the battle about the Maine banks settlement. As Lille or Lyon, the current mayor wants to create a modern district to attract companies in Loire fronts. From 2015, 75 ha must be built. But the Ump opponent, Christophe Béchu contests that wide operation et considers it as unrealistic. The concurrent project should be detailed from the beginning of next year", writes Tf1.

The recent debates on the public channel France 3 was largely dedicated to that topic and Christophe Béchu had forecasted that evolution with new pages about his own vision of the Maine banks reconquest in his website he links moreover to the tramway second line.

The facilities planned by two candidates to mayor office will make the voters' choice difficult

The explanations given on France 3 a few days ago by Frédéric Béatse and Christophe Béchu, both of them candidates to the Angers mayor office, outline some of the major differences between their respective programmes as well as the topics on which the voters will make up their mind in March 2014. Some of the main projects which should be implemented by one or another will be sources of debates and disagreements during the electoral campaign. The schemes regarding the banks of the river Maine and the second tramway route will be points of confrontations.

Mr. Béchu's vision of a future square along the Maine

If the two men agree about the interest to give a permanent access to to Maine banks to Angers inhabitants, their architectural and urban choices are different. Mr. Béchu has doubts (and more than doubts) about the ability to do so once the current speedway along the left bank will be filled and replaced by an aerial four lanes boulevard. "55 000 vehicles per day use that way and the project is to lower that traffic at less than 25 000. Where will the 30 000 other vehicles move?. That facility has already been paid. I suggest to cover the most central part of that speedway", he says. Mr. Béatse considers "thanks to that idea, Angers will have within 30 years, a look of the 70's".

Mr. Béatse opens a new car park at Saint-Laud

The route of the second tramway line and the previous issue are linked. According to Mr. Béatse, the new line must cross the Maine through the Basse-Chaîne bridge and then reaches the Saint-Laud station, something "necessary to strenghen the job of that facility". On the other side, Mr. Béchu opts for a crossing of the tramway by the Verdun bridge then a junction with the first line in a new square he wants to develop along the river. That line would later go towards the congress centre and then the future museum of contemporary arts he plans to set up where the jail is currently located. Both of them wish that the penitenciary be transferred to Trélazé.

Mr. Bechu plans to set up a museau where the jail is located

The economic situation is another field of dissent, so an issue voters will consider it on the election day. Both of them admitted they had no magic remedy to unemployment. Mr Béchu bets on "the gathering of all structures which currently depends on different authorities" and which are entrusted with the hunt for companies. Mr. Béatse points out that electronic is one of the way to replace the former Technicolor activity. "The professional electronic will replace the general public electronic", explained Frédéric Béatse.

A commercial centre Mr. Béatse plans in down town

The broadcast was also the theatre of cutting remarks in spite it was not a debate. Questioned about his multiple candidacies to elections, Mr. Béchu pointed out that it was better to have been a candidate several than a "putchist" a single one, a clear allusion to the way Mr. Béatse took office after Jean-Claude Antonini's resignation in 2012. The current mayor, himself asked about his election as mayor, pointed out that the procedure was perfectly legal and already implemented in other Western cities. After that one took cognizance of the fact Mr. Béchu was not in favour of a new stadium in case of the rise of the Angers Sco in 1st league, he nevertheless reminded that a few years ago his adversary was favourable to the building of such a new facility and considered it was not "responsible during an electoral campaign" to say that Angers was on a declining trend.

Invited to comment their logos, Mr. Béatse explained that the speech bubble of his one was "the symbol of the dialogue and the creativity", he wants to stimulate. Mr. Béchu also described his logo on which blues wavelets and plants are visible "they are the symbols of the two major issues of that campaign : the Maine and the botanical".

At first glance, the opening of down town stores deserves to be considered

Apparently, the opening of Angers retail shops on the two Sundays before Christmas was favourable to store owners, wooden huts operators, customers and the city which offered an enlivened atmosphere to visitors from outside. If  that days was, for a lot of people, only an opportunity to walk throughout the hustel and bustle of down town where street shows took place, numerous of them came in the stores, from where some of them left, with parcels or at least ideas of gifts for their relatives.

The most attended stores were surely the wooden huts, especially those selling food and beverages. People were standing in line for something to eat or to drink. Most of the shops were opened and made some sales. And many of those selling pastries had set up terraces on the pavement. Within a few weeks, figures of the turnover will say if the opening help to improve the local economic situation private decision-makers, and among them retail store owners, said it was worrying. Maybe it will not be the case, but behaviour of consumers is something difficult to change quickly and deeply. That needs time. The initiative is a first step and the project of a new commercial centre, where the post office is located, would surely create a need for openings on wider schedules.


On the other hand, it is sure the appeal launched by the Nouveau parti anticapitaliste (Npa) to a boycott of the Sunday openings was a failure. Seen from the Chaperonnière street, the Ralliement square and the Lenepveu street, some of the busiest places of the city, were overcrowded as if people were attracted by people. But this a fundamental law of economy, the offer creates its demands. May that not be forgotten in the future.

Angers companies are fed up of official speeches and worried by the worsening of business

While the electoral campaign for the 2014 municipal elections is entering in a very active period, the business must go on but, for once,  not at all costs. That was the message delivered by most of the employers' organizations on December 11th to the Maine-et-Loire prefet. These, gathered around Joël Freuchet, president of the Medef des Pays de la Loire, pointed out they were fed up with the administrative and fiscal pression on private companies, already weakened by the depressive economic situation.

"We need that the labour code and the taxations be reconsidered as well as the public expenditures,

Credit Pictures : Angers Loire Développement

like we audit them in our own companies", said Zohra Gallard, president of the Angers section of the Confédération générale des petites et moyennes entreprises. One of his colleagues, on behalf the road transport companies complained about "a fiscal and administrative environment which produces jobless people". According to the delegate of the plastic items manufacturing companies, "fiscal reductions are necessary to comfort the companies' capital stocks" and ask a decrease of the state operating expenses "which have to be filtered". All of them complain about the instability of the regulations the companies can't follow.

The dissatisfaction of the Angers business community is also due to a harsh deterioration of the economic situation. The most little companies are not able to redress their turnover and forecast a -2% recession which cmay even reach - 3,5 % in some specific sectors like hotel trade, retail trade, industry and households services. And, according to Mr. Freuchet, some other economic areas, like plastic, construction industry and horticulture face a tough drop of business what makes, morevover, appear a widening gap between public speeches pro-companies and the reality those live on the ground.

Frédéric Béatse and Christophe Béchu introduced their ideas for Angers on France 3

Frédéric Béatse and Christophe Béchu, both of them candidates to the 2014 municipal elections were on Decembrer 13th on France 3 channel to introduce their respective programmes and the mood of their electoral campaign. The main facilities these reprentatives plan to set up in the city during the next term were the principal topic of those successive expressions, Christophe Béchu first, then Frédéric Béatse. The way the public channel led those interviewes gives the idea the two candidates are in the same political position : each of them with a challenger in his own side, Laurent Gérault against Mr. Béchu and Jean-Luc Rotureau against Mr. Béatse. 

Regarding the 1st round of the municipal elections, Christophe Béchu explained why Laurent Gérault will not be included in his list : "I shall not negociate with the political structures and I shall not change my list two weeks before the second round". Frédéric Bétase having a similar problem with Jean-Luc Rotureau, he said Mr. Rotureau's candidacy was "a disappointment". 

But the largest part of the broadcast was dedicated to the facilities both candidates want to implement in Angers. The first opposition is about the route of the tramway between Belle-Beille and Monplaisir. The current mayor wants to see it joining the railway station (from the Basse-Chaîne bridge) while his opponent prefers to locate it differently (from the Verdun bridge towards the centre of congress). Another major approach is about the redevelopment of the Maine banks. Mr. Béchu is favourable to a cover othe current speedway et criticize the idea of the city council majority to burry that facility in order to build a new one in surface, while the current mayor thinks "Mr. Béchu's project brings back Angers to the 70's".

The economy issue was rather analysed than a review of projects. Mr. Béatse bets on the professional electronic (Loire Electronic Valley) to replace the consumer electronic disappearance (Technicolor) and Mr. Béchu in a big bang in the Angers economic structures he wants to gather to be more efficient. The true face to face between candidates will come later, said France 3.

Ways and voices in the Angers political landscape

B. Dupré

If many people criticize in France the fact the country is splitted between left and right, at the same time, political representatives, and even public medias, amplify the phenomena. In Angers, things do not really look clear in the centrist "family" which, theoretically, had been in position to support a centrist candidate betwen left and right. But, some of the local members of the Mouvement démocrate (Modem) and the Parti radical, others from the Union des démocrates indépendants (Udi), all centrists, have decided to support the Union pour une majorité populaire (Ump) candidate, Christophe Béchu, at the next municipal elections.

L. Gérault

Those have  made public on December 12th the reasons of their choice in favour of Mr. Béchu pointing out that their national leaders had nevertheless decided to be allied under the same banner, L'Alternative.The same day, a meeting was due to take place in Paris between the national decision-makers of the Udi and the Modem to settle the Angers case, after the Udi national leaders confirmed the nomination of Laurent Gérault, Udi delegate, so centrist (and himself supported by some Modem members!), as candidate for Angers mayor office. If the Modem leader at the Angers city council, Bernard Dupré, said he was sure that the way of an union with Christophe Béchu would get a "go-ahead", another of his colleagues in the minority side of the same assembly, Daniel Dimicoli (Parti radical) admitted implicitely that this was not so sure : "a choice has been made up even if we don't agree".

J.L. Rotureau

On the other side of the political landscape, i.e. on the left, Jean-Luc Rotureau, former Angers deputy-mayor and candidate to mayor office, claimed that France 3, a public tv channel, had choosen to organize a debate only between Frédéric Béatse, socialist candidate and current mayor and his conservative challenger, Christophe Béchu. Under the title "Voice is free", the broadcast will consecuently exclude the other candidates. Why, asked Mr. Rotureau who said he was shocked, pointing out that "the voice is not free".

Tthe candidate Frédéric Béatse announces his projects for the attractiveness of Angers down town and territory

Frédéric Béatse, candidate to his own succession for the next municipal elections, having duly recorded theAimer Angers five new projects he wants to implement during the next term. All these schemes have in common the "heart of the Angevine agglomeration" because "the development of the core of the agglomeration is fundamental for the employment and the future of our territory", the website explains.
new pace of the electoral campaign noticed a few days ago, has announced on December 11th through the website

In that perspective, the most important is the continuation of the enlargement and the expansion of the railway Angers Saint-Laud. That facility "must be a pivot of Angers development and able to answer to the inhabitants' needs of mobility". A new step will consist in the building a second railway station located at the South of the current one, partly because the access to the facility from the North is already complicated. "Everything must be done to enforce that positive asset for the city" what officialy contradicts recent rumors about a possible bypass of Angers with a new line from Nantes. Angers can't be circumvented, points out Aimer Angers.

The new commercial center and its glass gallery

Another facility had already been promised by Mr Béatse, as Angers mayor : the cons-truction of a second tram-way line. Given the" positive impact" of the A line, the candidate considers the new one is "a priority Angers Loire Métropole will have to implement". Unlike most of the candidates, Frédéric Béatse wants it set up between Belle-Beille (the Technopole) and Monplaisir (Europe square) with a stop close to the railway station and a section along the Foch boulevard. The extensions of the line towards Beaucouzé and Saint-Sylvain d'Anjou (6 km saved up) would come after 2020.

The Maine banks projets is considered through the favourable economic consequences (and not only environmental) it must have on Angers with 600 000 m2 from 2014 and during the next 25 years. The place should be dedicated to "creative companies" with a specific building "the creative maket building"(6 000 m2) for companies involved in plants, electronic, pictures and contemporary music. That facility should be st up in 2016 or 2017. The Saint-Serge district will be redevelopped and a new "Maine square" drawn.

The attention of the candidate is also about the commercial activity of Angers down town Mr. Béatse doesn't want to let it drop. The critics about the mineral aspect of the Ralliement square have been listened and the candidate wants to make easier the access with "pedestrian circuits on the thematic of vegetable". The idea he (and Jean-Luc Rotureau) puts forward is the creation of a new commercial centre in place of the post office with "new brands to attract new consumers".

Angers Chu cooperation with Malian doctors may make them self-sufficient in heart surgery

After the warm down in Bamako, the Mali capital Angers is twinned with for years, the cooperation between the two cities has resumed, specifically in the medical field. A team of the universitarian hospital centre of Angers was recently there in other to help the Malian doctors in the development of heart surgery. The professor Jean-Louis De Brux of the Chu of Angers carried out with Malian surgeons of the Point G hospital close-heart surgical interventions on four children between two and six years old.

Prof. Jean-Louis De Brux

According to L'Essor, a Mali newspaper," that achievement could accelerate the development of open-heart surgery in the point G hospital". Some of the Malian surgeons who have been taught in Angers by Mr. De Brux urged their government to fit the Point G hospital with equipment allowing them to treat more than 2 000 children.

The idea of a cooperation between Angers and Bamako in the medical field appeared in 2008. Since, Angers hosts every year Malian heart surgeons to get a specialisation and since 2009, the Jean-Louis De Brux team goes every year to Bamako to treat children for free until 2012. During their last travel to Mali, the Angers surgeons have been welcomed by the Malian health ministry. After Malian surgeons and anaesthetists have been educated in France, the development of the heart surgery in the Point G hospital depends now on up-to-date kits and constant electricity supply.

One of the two soldiers killed in Centrafrica was native of Angers

Antoine Le Quinio (right) 

One of the two French sodiers killed on December 9th in Bangui the Centra-frican capital was native from Angers. Antoine Le Quinio, a 1st class para-trooper born in 1991, was, with others soldiers, patrolling in the city, when, few before mid-night, his detachment was caught under the fire, and himself woun-ded. He died during the following hours as another comrade in arms, Nicolas Vokaer.

Antoine Le Quinio, single and without children,

had entered in a five years commitment in Angers after he got a degree in the mana-gement of automatic production devices. He was killed by militiamen of the former Sekela, a rebel army which demands the departure of the Centrafrican president and of the government. The purpose of the military operation launched by France aims to desarm those rebels. And the two losses took place during a search implemented by French soldiers in Bangui. Antoine Le Quinio and his comrade were transferred to the military hopsital inside the M'Poko airport where they died. Before he was sent to Centrafrica in December 2012, Antoine le Quinio was in Gabon.

Credit pictures : French defense ministry

Those two soldiers are the first killed after the operation Sangaris was decided to restablish order in the country. The French president, François Hollande, in a press release, has sent his condolences to the families and the relatives of the two men and ensured them of the "solidarity of the nation", reminding "that these soliders were there to protect civilians and ensure the delivery of the humanitarian assistance". On his side, the Angers mayor, Frédéric Béatse express his sadness after he learnt that news

The tree symbolizing the separation of religion and policy once again destructed

In the eyes of the Angers mayor, as probably, in those of many other inhabitants, the new act of destruction against the secularism tree, once again planted last saturday, has nothing to do with "simple" vandalism. An oak, Frédéric Béatse put in the ground of Lorraine square on December 7th, has once again been beheaded during the previous night.

The beheaded tree lit by candels

Visibly horrified, Mr. Béatse, who paid tribute to Nelson Mandela in the eponym school of Les Hauts de Saint-Aubin district on December 10th, felt that "there is no doubt about the symbolic will of the perpetrators who lead an anti-republican guerilla from day to day. These people must be convinced that we shall never be impressed by their violence. They must know that I shall once again plant that tree, and so as long as it will be necessary".

The first time the secularism tree was destroyed was just the day after racists insults were pronounced against the justice minister, Christiane Taubira  during a short visit to Angers and the mayor had already said that such act was probably not pure coincidence. And in fact, the second destruction was on the anniversary day of a law getting separated church and state, religion and policy in December 9th 1905. A new tree will be set up there in the days to come, said the mayor warning "the enemies of the republic they will not prevail".