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Macron promises to double state funding for transport in Marseille

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday he would double state funding for upgrading transport in the country's troubled second city Marseille, where 23 have been killed in drug gang turf wars so far this year.

Published: 26 June 2023 12:24 CEST

Macron promises to double state funding for transport in Marseille

Council housing apartment blocks are pictured in this general view of the north district in Marseille in 2012 (Photo by GERARD JULIEN / AFP)

“Everything has to move still faster” in Marseille, Macron told regional daily La Provence as he began a three-day visit to the Mediterranean port city whose regeneration is one of his pet projects.

The trip comes as Macron pushes to move the political conversation on from his bitterly opposed pension reform raising the retirement age to 64, which brought millions out in multiple nationwide protests.

France’s second-largest city after Paris but also one of its poorest, Marseille suffers from lacking infrastructure and tens of thousands of units of poorly-maintained social housing, mostly concentrated in the city’s northern neighbourhoods where the drug trade is endemic.

Macron in September 2021 promised €5 billion to hire new police, renovate schools and public spaces and upgrade the creaking public transport network, which is far less dense than in Paris.

The president said Monday that funding for transport projects in Marseille’s northern districts had been “especially increased” as he announced an overall doubling to €500 million.

Without naming any names, he also accused local officials of “procrastinating”, urging them instead to “think really big”.

Socialist mayor Benoit Payan has said still more resources are needed to tackle Marseille’s crippling problems.

Macron will visit police, a primary school undergoing renovation, an under-construction prison and a hospital during his stay, as well as meeting local people.

He may also further detail his plans to boost traffic along the Rhone river, linking Marseille’s huge ocean port to Lyon and ultimately Germany.

Hoping to address the drug trade more directly, Macron also said work was underway for police officers to collect immediate fines from users in cash or by bank card, as most currently go unpaid.

Law enforcement will be reinforced with more riot police later this year.

And the president is expected to detail plans to renovate privately-owned blocks of flats.

“It’s dirty here, there are rats, there’s dealing, no garden for the kids, no doctors, no work, everything works through connections,” complained Ahmad Kaddour, 57, in the Castellane housing estate.

While some die-hard pensions protesters banging their signature pots and pans may yet greet Macron, he will also face a court clerks’ strike and a demonstration by the hard-left CGT union during his visit.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.