Country and Territorial and Rural Balance Pole (PETR) of Burgundy-Franche-Comté

The country is a geographically, culturally, economically or socially coherent territory at the level of a living or employment pool. It expresses the community of economic interests of the municipalities or the EPCIs that compose it.The countries serve as the framework for a territorial project — enshrined in a territorial charter — on the basis of a shared territory project, common to a number of municipalities and intercommunalities which freely decide to join this project.It thus pursues two essential objectives: — to develop the assets of the territory in question; — to strengthen mutual solidarity between the city and the rural area. associations, mixed trade unions, public interest groups (GIPs) or more rare EPCIs, grouped by convention.They have a legal basis for the countries integrated for more than 10 years in the national planning policy organised by Law No 95-115 of 4 February 1995 for the planning and development of the territory known as the “Pasqua — Hoeffel” law, is constituted by Article 22 of the said law. However, this legal support was repealed by the law of 16 December 2010, known as the Law of Reform of Territorial Communities.The Law on Modernisation of Territorial Public Action and the affirmation of metropolises (MAPTAM) of 27 January 2014 has corrected the absence of a legal basis of the Countries and gives them a new future. Thanks to this new provision, they will be able to continue their territorial dynamics, sometimes existing for more than 10 years in a secure and stabilised legal framework.Article 79 of the MAPTAM Act offers the territories a new tool, the Territorial and Rural Balance Pole, which is also included in the new article L. 5741-1 of the CGCT, referring to Article L. 5711-1 of the same code, governing the closed mixed union composed solely in the present case of public institutions of intercommunal cooperation with own taxation. This territorial cluster will have to bring together at least two EPCIs with own taxation, one EPCI cannot belong to more than one cluster. The Pôle will be created by concordant deliberations of the EPCI and its creation will be approved by the Prefect of the department of its headquarters.In addition, the law restores a legal basis to the Development Council, an organ composed of the socio-economic actors of the territory. Among other things, he is consulted on the main orientations of the Pole and on the draft territory. A Conference of Mayors is also created.This new legislation therefore allows the countries and the territorial centres in the future to continue to carry out their actions and to work towards the revitalisation of their territories, at the service of the EPCIs that compose it. They may constitute the framework for sub-regional and sub-departmental contractualisation of development, planning and solidarity policies between territories.