Paris falls asleep …

There are few elements, in the press or on the canvas, allowing you to get an idea of ​​a crisis that comes down for the moment to a diffuse impression. It is true that in these times of municipal pre-campaign, the slightest observation, the sweetest critical passes for a political commitment for or against the local majority.

The few analyzes emanating from researchers, the Paris Chamber of Commerce but also reflections from the Medef or the Gabriel Péri Institute (Foundation of the Communist Party), however, lead to surprisingly convergent conclusions on the general atony of the region and the degradation of its economic and social fundamentals. But this diagnosis does not give rise to the debate it deserves.

We must thank François Ascher for putting his feet in the dish, when he launches that “ Paris is now cheesy », In recent delivery of the journal Local powers. The formula is violent and can injure political teams that have the feeling of having “ wet the shirt To advance and modernize the agglomeration. It is true that the problem very largely exceeds the boundaries of the capital, that it extends to the whole of Ile-de-France and that it does not date from the election of Bertrand Delanoë, as we will see. It is also true that in the eyes of the agencies of ratingthe Parisian signature is today one of the safest in the world, that the Augias stables have been cleaned, as, as the survey institutes tell us, the Parisian population, however traditionally conservative, would massively support municipal policy. The region, for its part, has been able to take responsibility for transport, to design a new master plan while inaugurating new forms of participatory democracy. Île-de-France remains one of the first world sites in wealth creation, with Tokyo, New York and Los Angeles, and remains, with London, the most attractive place in Europe for the locations of globalized companies. L’UNfinally, place the Paris region in second position for the quality of life.

So why worry ? Some easily verifiable elements can be put forward to justify it.

If we consider the fundamentals, the first symptom of evil lies in the current inflection of economic growth in the region. Yesterday engine of French growth, the region is today less well, in trends, than the average of the French regions. In the 1980s, and especially during the growth phase of the end of this decade, the region had a tiger in the engine: “ FRIBUS “, Certainly, but years of prosperity, reorganization and expansion of businesses, with what this has effect on employment and unemployment. So much so that the “ Pasqua law »Regional planning, in the mid -1990s, founded his expectations on the” abduction “Directed by Île-de-France on French growth and employment: according to an already old scheme, Paris is suspected of vampirizing the province, of unduly capturing the wealth of the country. And this without taking into account the fact that the Ile -de -France metropolis is both the best French asset in the new globalized economy and the main – almost the unique – pumps to redistribute the wealth created – via public and social budgets – to the rest of the country.

In the 1990s, the Ile -de -France growth engine stabilized and the gap with the rest of the country ceased to widen. Good news for regional planning, but not necessarily for national growth: the engine would have failures ? The use of the region, between 1990 and 1999, stabilized around 5 million assets, with even a slight reduction of a few tens of thousands of jobs. At the same time, the GDP By employment, that is to say the productivity of the region, continues to increase faster than in the province.

But since 2000, the fall begins … For the first time since 1980, the island’s contribution to French growth is starting to retreat (from 0.6 points of GDP national between 2000 and 2006). Wagons are now going faster than the Ile-de-France locomotive: France is struggling to achieve reasonable growth, Ile-de-France even more … Languedoc Roussillon ensures almost 5% of annual growth ! If we trust the experts of the new geographic economy a little, whose approaches dominate modern territorial analysis, the economic future of our countries would be in our metropolises, only capable of mobilizing the quantity and diversity of resources necessary for the development of competitive activities. The major world metropolises, and even more modest like Milan, Madrid or Barcelona, ​​understood this lesson and put all their energy to change and adapt their city to today’s world.

On the demographic level, the situation is also worsening: the negative migratory balance of the region is still deteriorating, with a massive departure not only of its retirees but also of its young workers. Its very positive natural balance makes believe that at least the Paris region is “ young “… which is not true: we are certainly born a lot in Île-de-France but to go very quickly in the provinces. Result, the share of 10-20 year olds in the Ile-de-France population is lower than in the provinces !

Employment also experiences a disturbing development (see tables 1 and 2, and graphic 1): it won, as we said, in the 1990s, with a loss of around forty thousand employment (while the province garner 750,000 new jobs). In the years 2000-2004, the hemorrhage continues (-20,000 employment for + 440,000 in the provinces). More serious, at the heart of the agglomeration, that is to say in Paris, where the operating issue of its job market is the most crucial, it is free fall: 210,000 jobs are lost between 1990 and 1999, and again 50,000 between 1999 and 2004. For only private salaried jobs, the figures are even more rough, with a loss of 85,000 employees private employees in Paris between 2000 and 2005 … We certainly observe a slight revival in the year 2006, but it will be necessary to wait to know what this small swallow brings … Homage must be paid to the phlegm of experts, journalists and actors of the city: all this goes without waves, while between 2000 and 2006, it is a little more than the total of the private employee of the Corrèze which was evaporated there. More broadly, and to fix ideas, between 1990 and 2004, 233,000 jobs disappeared from Paris, that is to say the equivalent of the total employment of departments such as the Côte d’Or, Gard or Vendée !

Table 1. Private employee UNDIC

Table 2. Total employment (INSEE estimate)

Graphic1. Evolution of private employee employment 2000-2005

Source: UNEDIC. Note: index 100 = value of 2000

The balance sheet of the effects of what, time passing, looks more like a decline than a crisis, remains to be done. In the available elements, it can be argued that this collapse of employment is reflected in a catch-up effect of the Ile-de-France on the province in terms of unemployment and poverty. Statistical uncertainties-not to mention conceptualo-administrative fantasies-unemployment make it difficult to use data. THE Rmiwhich is not exempt from bias for territorial analysis, gives us sufficiently striking figures to make sense: between 2000 and 2004, their number increases by 11% in the provinces and 25% in Île-de-France (and also in Paris).

Table 3. Evolution of the number of RMISTS

Source : Cnaf

The economic hole which is widening in the heart of the region, with phenomenal losses of employment in Paris for fifteen years, is reflected in a “ volcan »With an increase in employment in the first and especially in the second crown: the activities are deported to the periphery with what this has a massive loss of accessibility to the jobs of assets in the region (imagine that you live in Melun and that your job is no longer in Paris but in Cergy-Pontoise …), of also massive transfer of public transport (radial) to the automobile (which allows concentric travel that is increasing More) and therefore congestion and pollution … Irony of fate, those which are the most penalized in this game are the assets of the most modest, increasingly captive categories of the automobile, while the higher categories, which reside and work rather in central areas, have better access to public transport !

The most disturbing, in this case is that all of this suits the elected officials of the region: in Paris, the project to freeze the city and empty it of its companies-explicit among the Greens, suffered by the socialists and difficult to counter the communists-go well. He does not move more than that the Parisians who are happy that the town hall takes care more of them and the quality of their life than the health of capitalism (superb idea, for example, than to circulate the trucks as a snails during rush hour rather than the night, to protect the sleep of voters). It satisfies the owners who see in the quota of the real estate offer a means of increasing their rent. Besides, when the city’s professional tax revenues, seated on businesses, seriously decrease, the magnificent progression of the transfer duties of the Paris department is more than twice compensate for these losses. Everyone wins, in a way of “ giving-back Between the city and its rich inhabitants.

For suburban elected officials, everything is fine: Paris “ sharing Finally, his job (and his tax base) with his peripheries. In the political correctness of today, a resident who goes to live in the distant suburbs is a kind of anti-ecological scoundrel who strives to increase his environmental footprint (whether modest, in charge of children and unable to accommodate the center should not excuse it). On the other hand, the company that is loosening, an instrument “ territorial equity Is the real friend of the suburbs. The second crown is happy to see its job progress faster than that of the province … While this displacement does not result in any additional effect, as we have seen, for the use of the region, and that it causes the most powerful effects of disorganization of its job market (and even more than the spread of housing).

The elected national elected officials, at worst, observe this evolution without stir – Paris finally has a knee on the ground, we were waiting for that from Louis XI -, and at best ignore it. Finally, was not this problem of breakdown French growth, there is nothing that deserves to be debated.