France decentralization and regional economic development, Digi Mart USA News (France): In 2015, the NOTRe law was meant to give fresh momentum to decentralization by entrusting regions with responsibility for economic development. In practice, whether out of excessive caution or political distrust, the coherence intended by the national legislature has become a timid and late form of subcontracting.
The latest edition of the Choose France summit, held on June 1, 2026, at Versailles, was the occasion for the President of the Republic to announce 71 new investments in France, for a record total of 93 billion euros, capable of creating more than 15,000 jobs. The commentary describes this as a major success that everyone can welcome.
The problem, according to the author, is that regions, which received strengthened economic development powers in 2015 and will be expected to host and support these projects, learned on the same day which projects were involved, the amounts at stake and the targeted locations. The author calls this a striking paradox given the importance of the issues involved.
Another example cited is France 2030, a 54 billion euro investment plan launched in 2021 to finance innovation and the reindustrialization of the country. The state reserved only 500 million euros for its regionalized component, less than 1 percent of the total.
Local actors, who know their territories in fine detail and their priorities for employment and sovereignty, are thus assigned responsibility without the means to act concretely on the ground.
The author argues this is not a matter of oversights or organizational failures, but a symptom of a deeper system in which the French state remains in the middle of the ford on decentralization regardless of the strength of the current. While the NOTRe law gave territories more responsibility for the economy, those same territories are denied a natural role in decisions that concern their own prerogatives.
Reasons for such distrust are multiple, the author notes. Some point to fears of budgetary overruns.
However, the author contends that this argument does not hold: local authorities are legally required to balance their budgets, while the state repeatedly asks them for exponentially greater efforts, budget after budget. The author argues that the distrust is above all political.
Since 2015, regions have become genuine springboards whose elected officials have legitimate national ambitions, and strengthening a territory risks strengthening a political rival.
The costs of this caution are high, the author warns. Each time economic decisions are made without directly involving local actors, France loses some political coherence, industrial sovereignty, and the trust of businesses and citizens.
The commentary cites the example of a small or medium-sized industrial firm in a French region taken over by so-called hostile capital, which may gain access to sensitive information about its customers, suppliers and wider ecosystem, while most of the technical, financial and political tools that could have prevented such a failure depend on national decisions.
To turn this approximate practice of decentralization into a virtuous principle, the author proposes first a genuine and mutual trust based on the shared conviction that the economy is a tool of progress serving the general interest rather than a means of targeted enrichment. Second, the roles must be clarified: territories should decide what happens on the ground, support projects, and handle detection and local arbitration, using economic development agencies acting as trusted third parties.
These agencies would also address social acceptance of projects such as high-voltage power lines, chemical plants, wind farms and data centers. The national level would handle sovereign matters and major industrial sectors, maintain an overall vision, and associate regions with major attractiveness decisions, giving prefects and regional presidents a real arbitration capacity.
The author concludes that because decentralization is a decision of the national legislature, France must trust its institutions to embrace it fully by involving citizens, business leaders and local elected officials in major economic decisions. Without intelligent coordination, the French economy risks falling behind the giants of a globalization striding forward in seven-league boots.
