Will Alsace leave the Grand Est region? wonders Tagesschau. On Wednesday, April 8, French deputies adopted a bill in first reading to this effect. With 131 votes in favor and 100 against, this text, proposed by Macronist deputy from Haut-Rhin Brigitte Klinkert, paves the way for the “restoration of Alsace’s autonomy as a region,” continues the German media.
The initiative “aims to rectify” the 2015 territorial reform, “controversial,” which had reduced the number of French regions from 22 to 13, as specified by the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). Alsace, Lorraine, and Champagne-Ardenne were then united to form the Grand Est, but “many Alsatians harbor a deep resentment towards their belonging” to this region, affirms Tagesschau. At the time, this change had been accused of not “taking historical identities into account,” notes the NZZ.
For the Swiss newspaper, “what is truly remarkable,” is that the adoption of this bill was made possible “solely” thanks to the votes of the National Rally (RN), a party “long considered a staunch defender of a strictly centralized state.” While in 2013 Marine Le Pen opposed the idea of
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