Macron heads to Corsica to avert French repeat of Catalonia

Bloomberg

Emmanuel Macron doesn’t wa-nt Corsica to turn into France’s Catalonia. The French president on Tuesday begins a two-day visit to the Mediterranean island where a recently elected local administration is making demands for greater autonomy that the national government so far has indicated it can’t accept.
French governments have long struggled in their dealings with Corsica, an island of 330,000 that lies closer to Italy’s coast than France’s with an independence movement that’s resorted to violence in the past. While the island’s current leaders have renounced pushing for statehood, they say they could change their minds if the national government doesn’t meet demands for a special status for Corsican residents and an official role for the island’s distinct language. Both moves could violate the French constitution.
“Macron is a serious man and a believer in the state, and I don’t see how he can or will satisfy their demands,” said Camille de Rocca Serra, a 63-year-old former president of Corsican assembly. “It’s not possible and it wouldn’t be beneficial. France is a unitary state, not a federation.”

RESTIVE REGIONS
Macron’s decision to spend two full days in Corsica is out of proportion to its population and economy, both equal to about 0.5 percent of all of France. But attention has been focused on Europe’s restive regions after Scotland narrowly voted against independence in 2014 and Spain was plunged into a constitutional crisis when Catalonia’s parliament last September unilaterally called for statehood. Two northern Italian regions voted last year to negotiate greater autonomy from Rome.
Macron Tuesday will attend a commemoration for Claude Erignac, the island’s prefect gunned down 20 years ago by separatists on the streets of Ajaccio. He was the ninth state official killed by separatists after the independence movement splintered in the 1970’s and some turned violent.
He was also the last. The island’s main guerrilla group renounced armed struggle in 2014, and various nationalist movements merged into a coalition that limited its demands to greater autonomy and won a majority in December’s elections for the island’s assembly.
Gilles Simeoni, who heads the island’s administration, and Jean-Guy Talamoni, the president of the assembly, met January 22 and 23 in Paris with Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb and Senate President Gerard Larcher.