ORU Vice President Fogar reissues his victory in Auvergne Rhône Alpes

Last Sunday, on June 27, and in the general framework of the French regional elections, the vice-president of ORU Fogar, Laurent Wauquiez, revalidated his presidency to the Council of Auvergne Rhône Alpes. He got 55.17% of the votes. A week before, and in the first round of these elections, he had obtained 43.85%. Fabienne Grebert, who, coming from environmentalism, had the support of Unión à Gauche, and the candidate of the far-right party, Rasseblement National, Andréa Kotarac, had also passed into the second round. Wauquiez was a candidate for the right wing party, Les Républiquens, the classic Gaulist party, led for a few years by Nicolas Sarkozy.

Laurent Wauquiez had run for re-election in the region with the slogan "La Région avec toutes ses forces". Despite the pandemic, the great work of the finished mandate, as well as the great bet of Wauquiez, has been The Digital Campus: the creation of a university with 4,000 students dedicated to digital development. With the Campus and supporting technology companies around it, the will is to turn Lyon into the Silicon Valley of Europe. On a more day-to-day basis, the regional council has been intensely involved —within its possibilities— in ensuring security, despite the fact that security responsibilities are vested in the central administration. Thus, it has dedicated 160 million euros to ensure security, for example, with cameras, within the means of transport and institutes of its competence. Likewise, they decided to end all kinds of social aid from the region to repeating offenders.

At a general level, the regional elections have meant, together with a very high abstention (65.7%), the revalidation of the candidates of the traditional parties (7 from the right and 5 from the Socialists). The great losers have been the Rasseblement National of Marie Le Pen, which has not achieved the objective of governing in Provence-Alpes Côte d'Azur (PACA), and the party of Emmanuel Macron, the president, La Republique en Marche, which is insignificant at the territorial level.

Laurent Wauquiez, in charge of the region since 2016, beyond being vice president of ORU Fogar, is also president of the International Association of Francophone Regions. In the years 2011 and 2012 he was a minister. He has also been president of Les Républiquens.