Tuesday morning, the press was invited to the Hotel de la Collectivité by President Daniel Gibbs, on the imminent signing of the addendum to the post-Irma protocol, with the State. An invitation made urgently "in order to present to Saint-Martin the issues related to the amendment to the State-Collectivity protocols of Saint-Martin" that the Collectivity is preparing to sign very soon ".

President Daniel Gibbs must convene, on Saturday, December 14, "in urgency and in haste", an exceptional territorial council. Also, the President wanted to explain the reasons "before the media machine flies away ... without objective analysis or control".

Since the beginning of the year, the Collectivity has been in discussion with the State on the negotiation of an amendment to the two protocols which have linked them for two years on the reconstruction of the territory, and this until the end of 2020. These two protocols , signed in November 2017, provided for state budget support for the operation of the Collectivity, taking into account the loss of tax revenue the day after Irma.

According to the first protocol, signed on November 6, 2017 between the Prime Minister and President Gibbs, the budget support for the operation “of our institution provided for 12,5 million euros, to end the financial year 2017, and 50 million were planned for the years 2018, 2019 and 2020, readjustable at the end of each year, depending on revenue. " However, as of 2018, “the state unilaterally changed the rules of the game during the year. Only 25 million euros were paid to the Collective, whereas we had integrated 50 million euros into our provisional budget, in the operating section ”. The pretext displayed by the current prefect of Guadeloupe was that "you have twenty million euros, so you no longer need to pay the balance of this allocation". For President Gibbs, it was "a provisional level of cash flow. It was by no means a level of sustainable budgetary revenue. The sums were committed, but not spent ”.

“When we want, as President Macron encouraged us on September 12, 2017, to“ shake up the procedures ”, we are singled out. When we faithfully comply with procedures that are at least unsuitable, we are hampered… In short, with the delegated prefect and the prefect of Guadeloupe, we have been playing at their request, for over a year, by coin toss. Pile the State wins, against the Com loses! ". In 2018, the Collectivité suffered a budgetary imbalance of 25 million euros, “and yet we had played the game (…)

We thought that the State would also play the game. We therefore, in accordance with the terms of the protocol, integrated 50 million in operation for the 2019 budget. ” Indeed, 50 million euros in payment credit appeared, in November 2018, in the documents annexed to the Finance Bill ”. _RM

(Second part in our Friday edition)

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