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Old Posted Mar 15, 2016, 4:46 AM
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mousquet mousquet is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Greater Paris, France
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Hauts-de-France. Something like Upper France. That's the new name of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, the first to earn her new official name. It was passed by the regional council yesterday.

It seems many in the country are laughing at it - too many in France have had difficulties to acknowledge the need for change, unfortunately - and even locals of the region don't seem satisfied, especially those from former Picardie. They say they're losing their local historic identity. Nonsense. It will survive within the larger administrative body anyway.

The decision for this new administrative division was made by the national government in Paris. I guess the European Commission itself in Brussels could have passed a reform of this kind. That's what people don't like, especially the conservatives here. The fact that it came from the central government and was enforced without really consulting the people.

But here's my personal point. The reform was passed anyhow, no matter how we like it or not. So now we all must take it as something positive. I think regional councils will eventually be stronger from these mergings, that's precisely the good point to definitely help us finally push decentralization further.

People are funny here sometimes. They want more local powers for themselves, but then complain whenever anything is done in favor of regional prerogatives. The former regions were too small. That's it. Now we have them quite larger, so they might be able to achieve bigger things on their own.

Regarding the name itself, meh, I'm a little disappointed myself. It's kind of random and raises the question to know what France is. Huge question, hard to answer. I think France originally meant something like "land of the Franks", but the Franks came down from what is now the Netherlands and from some neighboring areas of current Germany some 1500 years ago. So one may deduce there are even some other kinds of "France" north of the region now called Hauts-de-France... Lol, I dunno.

Whatever, we'll get used to the new name. When all new names are chosen, I'll let you guys know. I find it funny and exciting, just like some new bigger toys or something.
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