The consultation is without legal value, but its result is final. The more than 150,000 voters in a “citizen consultation”, organized by the European Community of Alsace (CEA), voted 92.4% for Alsace to leave the Grand-Est region.
Voters were asked to answer yes or no to the following question: “Should Alsace leave the Grand-Est to become a region in its own right once more? The yes received 92.4% of the votes cast from December 21 to February 15 in a hundred ballot boxes, by mail and on the Internet, once morest 7.6% for the no. A total of 153,844 valid ballots were precisely counted, representing nearly 12% of the population of the two Alsatian departments registered on the electoral lists, according to figures from INSEE (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) .
“The Great East was a parenthesis”
Despite this modest participation, the result constitutes “a real popular success”, according to Frédéric Bierry, president (LR) of the CEA, resulting from the merger, in 2021, of the departmental councils of Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin. “The Alsatians have expressed themselves very clearly, they want the return of an Alsace region, and they will obtain the return of an Alsace region”, he assured, inviting the candidates for the presidential election to ” seize” of their “expectation”. “The Great East was a parenthesis. We are going to become a region in its own right once more,” he concluded in the presence of the minister responsible for integration, Brigitte Klinkert, former president of the Haut-Rhin departmental council.
Less peremptory, it was “delighted” with the outcome of the consultation, promising to relay “this request to the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic”. The return of an Alsace region has been a local demand since the creation of the Grand-Est region, which since 2016 has brought together the former regions of Alsace, Lorraine and Champagne-Ardenne. This question was highlighted by several Alsatian list leaders, including Brigitte Klinkert, during the regional campaign in 2021.
Expression of this “desire for Alsace” in the face of a region deemed too vast and heterogeneous by its detractors, a law creating the new European Community of Alsace was adopted in August 2019. The Prime Minister, Jean Castex, himself confided during a visit to Alsace to having “never been convinced” by the “huge regions, some of which have no historical legitimacy”.