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How François Bayrou’s MoDem prepares troops for the 2022 presidential elections

How François Bayrou's MoDem prepares troops for the 2022 presidential elections

The in-depth study by Enrico Martial

Every year, after the summer break, French parties organize meetings with their elected representatives that mix political debate and training. They are known as "Summer Universities" or Back-to-Work Universities ("Université d'été" or "de rentrée"). We attended those of François Bayrou's MoDem (Mouvement démocratique), which took place in Guidel-Plage, near Lorient, in southern Brittany, from Friday afternoon 24 September to Sunday 26 September.

An interesting part, the one that most differs from Italy, is not political. The MoDem and François Bayrou are trying to build a center party, or federation of center forces, to support Emmanuel Macron in the upcoming presidential campaign. Bayrou himself spoke about it to Guidel on Friday afternoon in front of about 250 local and national elected officials, and Prime Minister Jean Castex, together with various LREM exponents, answered him as invited, during Sunday's sessions. We will see and talk about it again at the “Campus En Marche” to be held in Avignon, on 2 and 3 October.

However, for most of the roughly seven hundred attendees who passed Guidel, the fall occasion is largely focused on relationship life and learning. It must be said that the training of elected representatives at local and regional level has been provided for by law since 1992, is compulsory for the first year of mandate and voluntary and financed for the following years. A reform took place in 2021, also to make the offer more competitive and simplify some procedures. These services are offered by qualified entities, such as the French Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, or by foundations that carry out training for parties but are independent from them. So, to understand each other, at least part of the travel costs to Guidel (the TGV arrives in nearby Lorient) are foreseen to participate in the courses and therefore also allow you to attend collective and political events.

The choice of locations is important: in this case, a holiday village, out of season, on the Breton coast, far enough from the city to safeguard the logic of a team retreat. Some things are borrowed from the company staff buildings: morning jogging, collective coffee or evening aperitif with accompanying music to talk and discuss, welcome with Bretonnes galettes to relax. The climate is sober, with a pattern similar to those seen in Germany or the Netherlands for similar meetings, between public administrations or in parties.

Networking, similar to business experiences, allows relationships beyond existing groups: the councilor of a municipality of 3000 inhabitants talks to the senator or the European parliamentarian about a project or political action. Also in Italy this network and interpersonal relationship functioning exists, here it is structured and favored. It is now integrated by digital: in the wake of what is happening in the French public administration (which has internal chat and collaboration platforms, design and videocall, as told by Start ), MoDem presented its own platform at the Université de rentrée di Guidel of community called “Cité démocrate”, with chat, discussion in groups, access to documents.

The training and knowledge part then relies on three tools. The first is that of compulsory and voluntary training, organized by Ifed (Institut de formation des élus démocrates), chaired by the party treasurer. In Guidel, the Ifed has ensured 14 hours of training for elected over 28 sessions, which can be traced back to three themes. The first, classic, helps them communicate: an actor and screenwriter has taught them to manage their breathing, pauses, tone of voice, a director to get right, even technically, a video interview, a digital expert to be reasonably and authoritatively present on the social. The second tool is between psychology and social psychology: it ranges from managing one's time between politics, professional activity and private and family life (since politics notoriously brings discrete problems in the home), but also to managing motivation, which it can suffer from routine or become painful with respect to an original political project due to frustrations in its implementation. Finally, the most serious and recent issues – very evident in France, with the yellow vests and a general crisis of participation – of loss of authority on the part of local elected officials are addressed. The interior ministry had counted 1,300 attacks against local elected officials in 2020, with 500 mayors and councilors subjected to private violence, 68 homes and 63 cars vandalized. There were sessions on how to manage or react to an attack (the ministry also organizes similar trainings) while from a legal and technical point of view there were two sessions on protection, prevention and sanctioning tools. The training then had the most classic sessions that we also know in Italy on the various policies, here focused on the legislation in preparation (the so-called "3D" law), on the relationships between municipal, supra-municipal and regional levels, on budget laws, on transitions climate and digital.

Then, apart from compulsory and voluntary training, and always on the themes of knowledge, in Guidel it was possible to participate in a good number of workshops for about an hour, to bring the local representative “on the piece”, as opportunities for updating. With the skills of elected officials committed to specific laws or policies, there have been workshops, for example, on handicap, on the Antarctic and the Arctic, on space, on rural development, on corporate social responsibility, or the meetings of the PDE (the European Democratic Party to which the MoDem belongs) on Brexit, European funds, strategic autonomy and defense, critical areas, including Hungary. On the new elaboration themes, there were meetings animated by the party think tank and by "Université 133" (which is also the address of the Parisian headquarters of the party, a play on words), on climate change and sustainable development (ie on topics even local ones with reflections on energy and territory), on secularism (therefore on internal security policies and on the management of the religious theme), on the party's proposals in the European context (young people, development, etc.) are topics on which one must be able to respond to the media and people who meet, in each location, during the next presidential campaign.


This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/come-il-modem-di-francois-bayrou-prepara-le-truppe-alle-elezioni-presidenziali-del-2022/ on Sun, 26 Sep 2021 06:37:51 +0000.