Challenges – Health is the first common good highlighted by the Covid crisis. How to preserve it in Occitania?
Carole Delga – In terms of health, this is the lesson to be drawn from this health crisis: it is essential to prevent and anticipate. These are the pillars of the work we do in the region. Guarantee better organic and local food for all, also guarantee a health professional within a quarter of an hour of each inhabitant. To make this ambition concrete, against medical desertification, we have opened 75 health centers in five years and I propose to hire 200 doctors and increase the number of nursing students by 20% per year. Quality and local health requires decentralization of certain skills: I suggest that the Region take control of the renovation of local hospitals. We are the right level to act: proof with the distribution to date of 22 million masks and the creation of a 100% Occitan mask manufacturing sector, a mobile screening and vaccination campaign to reach the most vulnerable areas. isolated with free transport on demand for people without a mobility solution. Anticipating also means funding research, in particular by helping emerging sectors to structure themselves, as we do with biotherapies.
Jean Tirole pleads for a regulatory state to ensure the general interest. What role can the regional level play?
He must listen and take action, to find solutions and accelerate projects. The goal is to encourage companies to seek in the common good the satisfaction of their own interests in a “win / win” imbued with societal, social and environmental responsibility. A sort of territorial added value. We already have regional aid for businesses conditioned on these points. We can go further with “sustainable and progress contracts”, to support companies for ecological transition, green jobs … We are also setting an example through innovation as with “Epargne Occitanie”, a savings scheme popular to support the local economy and employment or the Regional Agency for Strategic Investments to support industrial relocation and slow down a potentially destructive globalization of jobs.
How to preserve the environment which is one of the most precious common goods?
The Region has set itself the ambition of being the 1st positive energy Region in Europe. To achieve this, we support the development of green hydrogen, offshore wind farms, the energy renovation of private homes, soft mobility, etc. These actions find their place within a regional Green Pact set up after a citizen consultation phase. We must reconcile ecology and employment, support the sectors. This has been my way of doing since the start of my mandate in all areas: bringing together, listening, acting. As Montesquieu said, “To do great things, one must not be such a great genius; one must not be above men, one must be with them.”
To follow the “Saving the Common Good” Summit on May 27 and 28, register for free on the Commongoodsummit.com website.
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