They had their work voted on on March 16, and can finally breathe. The inhabitants who form the new Citizens’ Assembly, drawn by lot in 2021 by the City of Paris, have just had an unusual experience: spending 18 months together, at the rate of one working evening per month and a few plenary assemblies. , leading to the formulation of three proposals, which have just been adopted by the Paris Council. How did they experience it? 20 minutes spoke with five of them.
There’s no need to prolong the suspense, just give you right away the overall impression that emerges: for our witnesses, it’s a success. “I am happy with the result, we did concrete things, and it was not won”, testifies for example Magali Marx, a 46-year-old economist and mother of three children, who lives in the 13th… “For a first experience we have nothing to be ashamed of. For untrained people, 18 months of work with one session per month, you cannot ask for the moon”, adds this researcher at the Banque de France, who summarizes the situation as follows: “Do small, but do”.
Small, well, not that much: instead of one text as initially planned, three texts came out of these work meetings. The first delivers a roadmap for a new “Street Code”, and the others recommendations in terms of reading and energy renovation, to remove the obstacles encountered by Parisian owners.
“We were very supported”
To agree on these recommendations, drawn up in the form of three wishes, the citizens were well supported, they all say in chorus. “We were provided with a very discreet secretary general, who supported us well with the writing, the meetings, it was good”, explains Martine Verlaguet, former senior manager in the retired hospital function, 68 years old, and resident of the 18th arrondissement.
All of them say they were able to meet the experts or more generally the people they wanted to audition. “For all the people we asked to meet, or the places we wanted to visit, we had positive feedback”, comments Magali Marx, who adds: “The services of the City of Paris have really wet the shirt to make it possible, we were very supported”.
Many defections
Nevertheless, not everything flowed from source. The other citizens interviewed point to the numerous defections among those drawn by lot, which forced the town hall to change its tune, authorizing the 50 alternates to sit like the others, to have a quorum of at least 50 people. “There is a constraint of personal involvement, daily life is made up of difficulties, it takes time to devote oneself to that, but the experience was very interesting” relativizes Alessandro d’Ambrosio, 31, an engineer at the RATP who lives in the 16th.
Salma, 52, coach practitioner, resident of the 17th and French of Algerian origin as she describes herself, is one of the people who left this assembly, after 6 months of work which brought out the subject of the street code. “The subject towards the end, I did not recognize myself in it. This did not seem relevant to me compared to other issues such as the opening of metro lines 24 hours a day”.
A framing badly experienced by some
The members of the Citizens’ Assembly indeed found it difficult to agree at the outset on the choice of subjects to be discussed. The organizers wishing to leave the members free, the situation gave way to a little chaos. “We started small meetings, it was complicated to choose the theme on which we wanted to work. We had to decide, we didn’t have a roadmap, it was blank, we struggled a bit at the start to find out how it would go” explains Rémy Cuenin, a 65-year-old salesman and resident of the 12th arrondissement.
It is because of this relative wandering that the Parisian executive began to propose lines of work, explain our witnesses, a framework that is sometimes poorly experienced “We found ourselves working on the Street Code but we felt like it was a bit remote controlled… I don’t like the word “remote controlled” because that would mean the town hall took us by force, but we made that choice because it was easier , we were a bit lost,” remembers Rémy Cuenin.
A referendum on the proposals?
For the next citizens’ assembly, the spokespersons would like the organization to be tighter. “We suggested that there be a shorter selection time for subjects”, explains Magali Marx. “It would be good to immediately launch a survey on the themes that the assembly wishes to examine”, adds Alessandro d’Ambrosio, who also suggests the idea “of having the proposals voted by referendum afterwards”, in a form of democracy more direct.
Among other improvements, the members we interviewed believe that the representativeness of the assembly could be better thought out, by offering the employers of the citizens whom they allocate dedicated time. If the sessions are compensated up to 44 euros per half-day, no childcare solution was also provided or financially compensated, while single-parent families form a third of Parisian households.
“It made me want to make things happen”
If this assembly can undoubtedly improve in its functioning, our witnesses still keep very good memories of the experience, which allowed them to “see how things are going from the inside”, as summarized by Rémy Cuenin. “It was also interesting to be welcomed in the palace of the Paris City Hall, these are places full of history and which bring a lot of emotions”, recalls Martine Verlaguet.
Both emphasize having been able to forge links with Parisians from all walks of life and of different ages, in accordance with the representativeness desired by the organizers, and thus having acquired a better knowledge of the city. These links sometimes persist for some, since small groups continue to talk and see each other, as on March 19, during a visit to the Eiffel Tower.
Finally, and this is one of the pleasing effects of this meeting, it has made some of its members want to invest themselves even more in civic life, such as Martine Verlaguet, who had to leave when the interview ends ” at a conference on water at the Climate Academy”, which she discovered through this. Just like Rémy Cuenin, who has already agreed to make the link with the new assembly and is considering getting involved in other structures: “It made me want to make things happen. »