Les régions françaises et le soutien aux territoires depuis 2016

The contractualisation of the French regions with the project territories has changed since 2016, following the regional elections in December 2015 and the change of perimeter of some regions. The homogeneous panorama of the previous contractualisation, based on projects territories organized in « pays », has been followed by a varied landscape that rests this contractualization sometimes on « pays » or « Pôles d?Équilibre Territoriaux et Ruraux » (PETR), sometimes on public institutions of intercommunal cooperation (EPCI) (communities of municipalities or agglomeration), especially since their enlargement resulting from the NOTRe Act of 2015. Regional support for territories continues through contracts with project territories organized in PETR or « pays » in almost half of the metropolitan areas. But since 2016, regions have chosen the scale of communities of municipalities and agglomeration, or even « pays » if this corresponds to a local will to contract. Another region favours to wider spaces than « pays » or communities as a gateway and three regions are more in a box office logic. In addition, one region has abandoned support for local engineering, while another is developing its relationship with territories on this basis. We are keen to analyse these developments for the regions of metropolitan France. The issue in the future will be to determine the right critical mesh of intervention. Support sustainability for the engineering of territories is also a matter of question.