The reduction of the number of French regions may constitute a turning point for Angers

Les nouvelles autorités angevines devront, à un moment ou à un autre, exprimer leur point de vue à propos du redécoupage régional que le gouvernement français veut mettre en place à compter de 2017. Deux sources d'informations convergent à propos d'un démantèlement des Pays de la Loire, Angers et le Maine-et-Loire rejoignant une région Centre élargie dans laquelle la cité du Roi René passerait, en nombre d'habitants, du deuxième au troisième rang et s'éloignerait du centre de décisions. Une session extraordinaire du Conseil régional a été convoquée le 13 mai. 

The post World War II Angers history could be at a turning point given the reduction of the number of the
current 22 regions the new French government has recently decided to tackle. A few days ago, the Challenges magazine has published a map of 12 regions which is said that it could be the one choosen by Manuel Valls, the new prime minister. According to that map, the Pays de la Loire region, of which the Maine-et-Loire and so Angers are parts, will purely and solely be dismantled. Such an evolution looks to be believable because the president of the Pays de la Loire authority, Jacques Auxiette, has called in an extraordinary session of the Conseil régional saying that "the unity of the {region was} at stake".


The governmental scheme plans to include the Maine-et-Loire department (as the Sarthe and the Mayenne) in an enlarged Centre region and so locates Angers at the border of it. The former Pays de la Loire capital, Nantes would join an enlarged Brittany region in which the Loire-Atlantique department was part before the WW2 while the Vendée would become part of a Aquitaine-Limousin region.  Angers and Nantes never have in the past close and confident relations and the first was often blamed by the second to siphon the assets of Angers which was the second town of that territory.

According to Insee datas, Angers and its surroundings (216 000 inhabitants) would not keep the same rank in the Centre region, in which Tours would be first (346 000) and Orléans the second (270 000). If Angers is located at 90 km from Nantes, about 130 km separate Angers and Tours. The new Angers mayor, Christophe Béchu, had disclosed a few months ago he was not in favour of the unification of the Maine et Loire in a widened Centre region because the city would then be at the doundaries of it. In front a such an hypothesis, due to be implemented from 2017, the Angers city could only rely on itself for getting more economical development. But is that new?