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Batera eyes long "fight" for Basque territorial collectivity

Civil society organization announces mobilizations to be agreed over the next few weeks · Socialist MP Colette Capdevielle proposes the establishment of Basque collectivity in French Assembly

Basque civil society organization Batera promised on Saturday to engage in a long “fight” in order to achieve a status of partial autonomy for the Basque territories in the French Republic (in yellow colour, map).

Batera's General Assembly decided to confirm the territorial collectivity status as the goal of the Basque national movement in Iparralde, as the organization vowed to go ahead with political mobilizations that should be decided over the next few weeks.

Being one of the main Basque political organizations in the Northern Basque Country, Batera argues that the Basque lands in the French Republic should have their own political institutions. Iparralde -as those territories are known in Basque- is currently included in the larger department of the Atlantic Pyrenees, alongside the Occitan historical territory of Bearn. The Basque movement says Iparralde needs its own institutions to decide locally in matters such as language, culture, tourism, transport, agriculture or cross-border cooperation.

This last point is especially important, since south to Iparralde's border there exist two Spanish autonomous communities that make up the majority of the Basque territory and population: Euskadi and Navarre (green and pink, left map).

Last month, several thousand people marched in Baiona to call for a Basque territorial collectivity. The mobilization had the support of Batera, Basque members of all political parties, elected representatives and local institutions.

A difficult way forward

Several Basque politicians are trying to convince the French institutions of the benefits that a territorial collectivity could bring to both Iparralde and France. Socialist MP Colette Capdevielle proposed some days ago in the French Assembly that a Basque territorial collectivity be created. Nevertheless, her proposal did not enjoy the support of her party, so it is now deemed to fail. Batera speaker Martine Bisauta has said to Le Journal du Pays Basque that Capdevielle has a difficult scenario because the Socialist Party is “highly dogmatic” as regards to keeping the majority of political powers in Paris.

Another Socialist MP, Frédérique Espagnac, has also introduced her own proposal. Instead of creating a territorial collectivity, Espagnac has proposed to create a “metropolitan pole”, an administrative structure that in France is foreseen for large urban areas. Nevertheless, metropolitan poles can receive less powers than territorial collectivities. Batera is against this proposal, but Espagnac argues this is the only way forward that the French government -and especially the minister of Interior, Manuel Valls- would agree to consider for Iparralde.