A study on Achieving Agreements Between Municipalities and Communauté Urbaine in French Governance

Abstract

This study aims to clarify the importance of cooperation between municipalities to deal with the needs of public authorities. In France, municipalities (Commune) are quite small and total more than 36,000. As a consequence, cooperation authorities (EPCI) have been developing since the second half of the 20 th century. In this paper, we establish the crucial public management point in achieving agreements between each EPCI and its municipalities, especially concerning topics which often cause conflicts of interest (ex. Urbanism, Economic development). LMCU (Lille Métropole Communauté Urbaine), one of the successful cases, is taken as an example to clarify its crucial function in the region. LMCU has established an original way of improving relationships between LMCU and its municipalities, which is called Contrats de Territoire. This method features flexibility and integrity, but it has to be kept in mind that the EPCI has defects and it isn't the all-purpose system for local autonomy. Even in France, the country in which cooperation between municipalities has progressed significantly, developing relationships between each EPCI and its municipalities hasn't been easy. It is important to understand that enough competence and budget, as well as good relationships between EPCIs and municipalities, are indispensable for EPCIs to function as regional governments.