Putting the boot in

The French housing minister, Christine Boutin, has an odd way of lending her support to her cabinet colleague and junior minister for urban policy, Fadela Amara.

With just a over a week to go before Amara is due to launch her strategy for resolving the problems of the country’s deprived inner city suburbs, Boutin – her boss – has weighed in and said that she doesn’t really believe a plan aimed solely at those areas will work.

In an interview with the Catholic daily, “La Croix”, she questioned the wisdom of proposals that would, in her words, for the umpteenth time, only address the problems of the suburbs without taking a look at the wider picture of the divisions that existed in the country’s towns and cities.

Instead she calls for a “global solution”. Any plan for real urban regeneration, according to Boutin, must take into account the needs of everyone in the local community – poor and wealthy alike.

She stresses that all barriers – physical, cultural, psychological and economic – have to be broken down, discrimination ended and everyone encouraged to “work together for a common future.”

The millions of Euros that have been poured into the inner cities over the decades have not helped resolve their problems. For Boutin, the distribution of financial aid has become far too complicated, public services, hospitals, schools and employment opportunities are lacking where they are mainly required and most importantly there’s a dire shortage of decent and affordable housing that needs to be at the heart of any urban regeneration programme.

She insists the solution lies in listening to the elected local officials and letting them decide how and where to spend the money.

Fine sentiments indeed and ones that Amara may well echo next week, when amongst other things she too is expected to call for an end to the ghetto mentality and create links between all social classes

Boutin might claim that the two women get on well together and compliment each other, but she has hardly thrown her support behind Amara’s proposals just as her junior minister is about to put the finishing touches to them.

Perhaps though it’s not so surprising as even though they are united in government, the two women could not be further removed from each other politically.

Boutin is a member of Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right “Union pour un Mouvement Populaire”, an advocate of moral conservatism and founder of one of France’s largest pro-life organisations. Amara is a practising Moslem, an outspoken Socialist, anti-racist and feminist who has spent years campaigning for women’s rights.

The two will stand side by side at the launch of Amara’s “Equal Opportunities” programme on January 22, but Boutin has made it clear that the findings will be those of the junior minister to whom she has given a “free hand” in putting together the proposals.

Now that really is called putting the boot in.


JS