The oppositions have still not digested the trip of the mayor of Paris to New Caledonia and Tahiti. “While Anne Hidalgo buckles her seat belt on the plane, Parisians are tightening their belts,” says a Parisian elected official, ahead of the Council on Tuesday.
Published on 14/11/2023 07:23
Reading time: 1 min
The day of Tuesday, November 14, promises to be tense at Paris City Hall. The budget debate will be on the agenda for a Council of Paris at 9 am, but the current controversy over Anne Hidalgo’s trip to French Polynesia is bound to fuel discussions. The opposition has still not digested the episode and will have their say. In short: there is no question of letting this €60,000 trip go by unnoticed.
For Rachida Dati and the Parisian right, the budget orientation debate will be an opportunity to draw a parallel with the billions of euros of debt that the city of Paris is facing. “While Anne Hidalgo buckles her airplane seat belt, Parisians are tightening their belts,” says an elected official. In an interview with Le Parisien (article reserved for subscribers), the president (LR) of the Changer Paris group, Rachida Dati, believes that “it’s up to justice to take it up.”
But Anne Hidalgo’s camp has no intention of letting it slide. It can rely on the opinion of the Ethics Commission, which found nothing to criticize about the funding of the trip and believes that no public funds were used for private purposes. If Anne Hidalgo extended her stay with family, she paid for it out of her own pocket.
And the mayor of Paris is preparing her counterattack: a deliberation establishing transparency on the trips of all Parisian elected officials, whether those trips are paid for by the community or by another organization, with the idea of putting some elected officials on the right in an uncomfortable position for having accepted potentially embarrassing invitations.
