In the heat of the news since the start of the school year when her city is plagued by various episodes of violence, Johanna Rolland appeals to the Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti. Justice is the missing link in the fight against insecurity, believes the socialist mayor who has, moreover, decided to support Olivier Faure at the head of the PS, but refuses a common list of Nupes in the next European elections.
L’Express: Since the start of the school year, numerous episodes of violence and attacks have multiplied in Nantes. The Minister of IntGérald Darmanin and you have increased national and municipal police personnel. Is it sufficient ?
Johanna Rolland: The prefect tells us today that there is an improvement in the situation, particularly with regard to attacks on people. For my part, I want to remain very cautious because the battle for security, in reality, is won over time. There was a serious mobilization of the State with the reinforcement of 70 national police officers, as I had requested from the Minister of the Interior. On the municipal side, we have increased municipal police and video surveillance cameras. However, there is a link in the chain that still does not answer the call: Justice. You have to realize that at European level, there are 17 judges per 100,000 inhabitants. In France, it’s 11. And in Nantes, there are only 5!
Didn’t you talk about it to Éric Dupond-Moretti, the Keeper of the Seals?
I have already challenged him, well before the events of the new school year which marked Nantes, by asking him why the allocation of the justice staff was not made according to the increase in the population. When a city like mine gains 8,000 inhabitants a year, the lack of means ends up weighing down. I saw him, I wrote to him and I can’t wait to read his answer… I note today that the State has become aware of the urgency of stepping up a notch on the Police side to Nantes but I am eagerly waiting for the Keeper of the Seals to also take stock of the gravity of the situation. It is an absolute necessity for Nantes but for the other big cities in France, too.
Is Nantes still a safe city?
Drug trafficking plagues the big cities of our country. On the other hand, there were remarks, with regard to Nantes, which are not acceptable from the point of view of ethics. I saw a senator, elected by the Republic, instrumentalize a situation for political ends by taking up a ranking which placed Nantes after Bogota in terms of safety and which all the press denounced because nothing was serious in this study. I saw the ongoing passion CNews had for Nantes, too. When Nantes welcomes 600,000 tourists this summer or when it is one of the cities with the lowest unemployment rate, when its economic dynamism is envied by other cities, the same people are not very talkative.
“The amalgam between immigration and insecurity is the rhetoric of the RN”
Insecurity seems to strike most major cities, how to explain it?
For a long time, the West was rather spared, unlike the South and part of the East of France. In particular because the drug trade was not concentrated there. If I dared, I would tell you that the market is the market and that those who are at the head of this traffic have simply spotted that there was material to invest there. From this traffic arises violence to the person and I therefore call on the State to carry out the work necessary to dismantle this traffic, which is the source of many evils in our large cities.
Emmanuel Macron and Gérald Darmanin are forging links between increased violence and immigration. Nantes is one of those cities that have welcomed many migrants in recent years. Do you make this link?
The amalgam between immigration and insecurity is the rhetoric of the National Rally. It will never be mine. But there is a reality: drug trafficking exploits human distress and a certain number of young people find themselves projected by international networks into situations of delinquency in our big cities. The state must dismantle the trafficking.
When we talk about violence, we tend to forget that the main victims are women…
(She cuts) That’s why being on the left doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to this issue. The battle for security is part of the battle for equality. The left must be there! Nantes has opened a center to welcome women in distress. A place like this, open 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, where women can come with their children, with doctors, psychologists, lawyers, with the possibility of filing a complaint on the spot, that did not exist not before in France. At “Citad’elles”, I saw women aged 17 to 82, from all social backgrounds. 3,200 women have pushed through this door since it was created in 2019. It’s scary. So when I hear the government say that the great cause of this second five-year term will once again be gender equality, I cough! From words to actions, there is more than a chasm.
“Security is first and foremost a left-wing subject!”
Didn’t the state help you ?
It was quite a story! Marlène Schiappa (ex-Secretary of State for Equality between Women and Men and the Fight against Discrimination, Editor’s note) initially refused, again and again. It took a direct dialogue with Prime Minister Jean Castex for the State to agree to support this center on a minority basis. The gap between words and deeds is terrible. All actors, without exception, agree that there is a need for one billion euros dedicated to the fight against violence against women. Everyone agrees on this diagnosis, but the government is not meeting this need.
Is security still a “left-wing” subject?” ?
First of all, it’s a left-wing subject! It is a necessity to defend the most fragile. We are still not going to let the RN and the far right exploit this subject for populist purposes. Look at what the mayors of Rennes, Nancy, Montpellier, Rouen or Cherbourg are doing. They are fully aware of the security issues and respond to them.
You only mention socialist towns. However, this is not a vision shared by your rebellious and environmental allies within the Nupes, especially when we hear Jean-Luc Mélenchon say “the police kill”. The acesecurity, is it one more division to the left?
I don’t believe that is the reality. With certain fellow mayors and PS deputies, we will remind the PS congress in January that security and justice issues must be at the heart of the left, that the police must be better respected and respectful, and we are also proposing a control authority which must to be independent.
I would never say “the police kill”. Never. Because I think that’s not the reality, because this systemic vision is not mine. I see them, our law enforcement, our municipal and national police. I know how arduous their profession is and, in our republican pact, our need also today to recognize these professions. On the other hand, mayor of a city which has been so bereaved by the death of Steve Maia Caniço (died drowned in 2019 after a police charge, editor’s note), I have no trouble saying that police violence exists .
Today, on the left, the force goes to Jean-Luc Mélenchon obviously whose PS is the ally. Is this a state of affairs that will persist or do you expect the PS to regain control sooner or later?
My subject is not only the future of the PS. The reality is that the left won neither the presidential nor the legislative elections. It is not the majority in the country. Nobody found the recipe today. We must therefore continue to lead the battle of ideas, find a direction, a breath and a little more collective desire too. This is the whole point of the PS congress, because there is, I am convinced, a space for the left. I supported the agreement with Nupes but it is not because we come together that we must stop thinking, that we must stop cultivating our identity. This is why, moreover, I am not in favor of a common list with France, which is insubordinate to the European elections, but in favor of a list with the ecologists. If we consider that we can compromise so much on European values, we risk losing voters.
“Social is an unthought of government policy”
But when the PS is 1.7% at the prpresidential and sends only 30 deputies to the National Assembly, owhere is space?
We still have a government which, year after year, has missed all the appointments to lead the ecological transition and to fight against poverty and inequality. It is not up to it and it is therefore up to the left to assume these subjects, to assume a transformation. I am for a radicality of contents, of measures, but not for a radicality of postures. Only that will work. The social-ecology that I defend assumes the ecological AND solidarity bifurcation. One does not go without the other and this is how the PS will once again become central. This is the meaning of committed work: when Boris Vallaud at the National Assembly talks about the issues of solidarity sobriety, when with others, I say in the contribution I make for the next Congress of the PS that we do not want a green oasis for some in the middle of a desert for all the others.
So how can we accept that only 85 million euros are put in the finance bill in transport while the SNCF is asking for 8 billion and Germany is investing 10 billion? The “green fund” to carry out the ecological transition in the territories has been endowed with two billion euros while all the specialists, even the economist Jean Pisani-Ferry who participated in Emmanuel Macron’s economic program in 2017, believe that it takes between 30 and 50 billion in the country! There are many examples that demonstrate that the State is not ready for emergencies.
You, and many other local elected officials, are tres severe with regard to the government and Emmanuel Macron. Is it always the fault of the “big bad state” ?
On too many subjects, too often, we wonder what the state is doing. Local elected officials assume their responsibilities. For example, France Urbaine (the association of metropolises and large cities of France which it chairs, editor’s note) agreed to participate in the National Council for Refoundation organized by Emmanuel Macron, to be constructive. Challenging but constructive. During the first day, dedicated to diagnoses in France, we talked about the climate, the financial situation of the country… It took the intervention of Christophe Robert, the general delegate of the Abbé Pierre Foundation, and mine to let the social question be discussed. It wasn’t even on the schedule! It is good that this is an unthought of government policy.
I know how to tell when measures are going in the right direction. The economic policy implemented during the Covid crisis, for example, was the right one, it was effective. But since the start of this new five-year term, I have had the unpleasant impression of sight-seeing. The President of the Republic had himself said that we had to learn to govern differently, because he did not have an absolute majority in parliament. But his government is having a lot of trouble accepting this new deal and we are more in monologue than in dialogue.