Paris mayor declares coming back to public service
Dear Friends,
We would like to share a very important victory against privatisation of water here in France: After months
of a quite hard discussion and lobbying between the “left”
parties, activist and the transnationals, the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë,
announces the “retour” to a unique public service for water as one of
the main goals of his new mandate; ( he will be very probably elected again in March 2008)
This is a big victory for our friends of “Eau de Paris” ( greens ) and public operators from Val de Marne ( communists ) and all NGOs that struggle for public water; This is also a quite symbolic victory against Suez and Veolia in his own land.
After being evasive concerning the renewal of the Suez
and Veolia contracts, finally the socialist mayor decided to choose clearly a position against the renewal of the two contracts, signed in 1985 by Chirac when he was mayor;
*******************************************************************
Le Monde , 7 november
” The mayor wants to take this historical opportunity
to take the entire control of the water management, that was partially led to private groups in 1985; (..) ‘ I would like to propose to Paris
habitants a public operator which guarantees the quality of water at an
affordable price’ (…)
‘ A single public owned operator that manages all the cycle of production and distribution of water’
“At the Paris council, the Green and the Communist party have been struggling for a long time to come back to public management. (…) Anne Le Strat, president of the Paris Water company, says she is satisfied with the mayor’s decision; ”
casumm 