"The Prefects, or Paris's Control of the Provinces"

Let's translate what the Prime Minister said: when we increase the power of the prefects, it mainly means that we are increasing the power of Paris in the provinces. This is what we call taking control.

But what's a prefect really for? A prefect is an official representative of the state. France is a highly centralized country, so in our country, it's an institution. From the end of the 16th century, there were what we called intendants. They were exactly like prefects. At the time, France wasn't divided into departments, but into Generalities. And you had intendants in all the Generalities. They were appointed by the king and obeyed him directly.

These intendants were very authoritarian, and the population hated them. So during the French Revolution, the intendants were abolished. They also took the opportunity to reorganize France. They created the departments. At first, there were 83. And then Napoleon arrived, and in 1800 he created a corps of elite civil servants: the prefects. For Napoleon, this was one of the most important positions. The prefects were his official representatives in the provinces. They appointed them personally. Disobeying a prefect was disobeying the emperor. Which was obviously not advisable.

They had a lot of power; they were already the chiefs of police in the departments, just like today. But they had an additional power: they appointed the mayors and deputy mayors of towns with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants. For large towns, you couldn't become mayor if the prefect didn't agree. So, in short, they had almost complete power over appointments.

Little by little, prefects became established in the landscape. And their missions diversified. Some even left their mark on our daily lives. Like Prefect Hausmann. In the 19th century, he organized the modernization of Paris, the major works that would make it a great capital. Another legendary prefect: Eugène Poubelle. In 1883, he required Parisian homeowners to have a receptacle for household waste. He also imposed waste collection. It is therefore to him that we owe the widespread use of what has since been called, and in his honor, a dustbin.

And today, prefects are still just as important. Moreover, they are still directly appointed by the President of the Republic. They decide a lot of things regarding police matters. François Bayrou says he wants to increase their power to simplify the functioning of the state. If the state were capable of simplifying anything, we would know about it. It's above all a signal of more authority and more order. And after all, why not?