Community, Volunteerism, Compensation

1
Community, Volunteerism, Compensation

• Reflections on French Structure
• Benoît Jaquet
• CLIS de Bure

2
Decision Structure

• In France, many decision levels elected
  authorities with overlapping responsibilities
• State level Government and decentralised
  representatives in both regions and départements
  (similar to counties? Larger and more identified
  than districts)
• Regional and Departmental (General) Councils
• Municipality (and possibly, conurbanations)

3
Defining Community? 1

• Hard to pin down, and so the national legislator
  asserts a definition
• 1991 Act (or decrees of application) sets
  criteria for RWM site selection
• Geologic and demographic characteristics
• Departmental political consensus in favour of
  project (motivated by the perspective of
  compensation)

4
Defining Community? 2

• In principle the affected community is legally
  identifiable
• But the law also creates a CLIS Local
  Information and Oversight Committee
• Elected authorities of all levels except Govt
• Socio-economic representatives
• Civil society representatives
• State representatives

5
2 Distinct Competent Parties

• The General Council (Elected authority of the
  Department)
• Official candidate for installation siting
• Competent for economic devt/planning
• Able to receive and allocate compensation
• The CLIS
• Competent for oversight of research programme
  and public information

6
2 Distinct Roles 2 Different Weights

• The General Council has powers in the phased
  decision process
• Opinion before authorisations
• Consulted on accompanying measures
• The CLIS has no decision powers
• Yet the most focussed discussion forum
• The most transversal in representation

7
Articulation

• For the local siting process to work
• The two communities or competent bodies must
  cooperate
• They must agree to share out tasks
• And inform mutually of their negotiations within
  their margin of action viz. the State or the
  various agencies
• This has not been the case up to now in France

8
Solution?

• Define a single community
• Grouping broad range of representative actors
• And competent in the range of roles
• (Sweden, Belgium)
• Ideally, a community with direct interest and
  competence in the issues
• Nuclear host site?