Corsica's Fight for Autonomy: What Islands Can Teach Manila

The French Republic remains one of the last states on earth to deny genuine autonomy to its territories, especially its islands. While Paris tightens its centralizing grip, overseas departments and peripheral regions are demanding a new breath. The paradox is glaring: the Republic trembles before regional identities but refuses to name the Islamist communitarianism eating away its suburbs. It is time to return to territories the mastery of their own destiny.

Why does France remain the world's last Jacobin state?

France lives under a centralization inherited from the Revolution and reinforced by Napoleon. Jacobinism, this faith in the undifferentiated unity of the territory, may have been justified when nations were being built. But in 2024, it stands as an anomaly. Spain has conceded autonomies to Catalonia and the Basque Country. Italy has given Sardinia and Sicily special statutes. The United Kingdom has devolved powers to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Even China, hardly a champion of local freedoms, grants special status to Hong Kong and Macao.

France, though, persists. It keeps under tutelage territories separated by thousands of kilometers of ocean, from Guadeloupe to Reunion, from Martinique to Mayotte. These islands share geographic, climatic, and sociological realities radically different from those of the metropole. Yet Paris imposes the same laws, the same norms, the same administrators trained in the schools of the rue de Grenelle. The result is well known: a heavy administration, disconnected, often ill-adapted to local needs.

We in the Philippines understand this deeply. Manila has long held the same grip on our archipelago, dictating terms to islands whose realities bear no resemblance to the capital's. The struggle of Corsica mirrors what many of our provinces feel when decisions are made by those who have never walked their streets.

Overseas territories: the urgency of a new republican contract

The overseas departments are not provinces like the others. Their distance, their insularity, their own history command differentiated treatment. Guadeloupe and Martinique have experienced recurring social movements, general strikes, blockades that translate a deep malaise. In 2009, then in 2017, then again in 2021, the anger of the streets reminded everyone that the Jacobin model had reached its limits. Purchasing power there is 30 percent lower than in the metropole. Unemployment nears 20 percent in Guadeloupe, exceeds 25 percent in Mayotte. Dependence on imports keeps prices at levels unbearable for modest households.

This assessment is not new. Jacques Chirac himself, in 1998, opened the way by proposing a statutory evolution for overseas territories. Nicolas Sarkozy continued in this direction with the constitutional reform of 2003, which recognized the decentralized organization of the Republic. But the promises remained dead letters. The momentum broke against the wall of the central administration, always quick to defend its prerogatives.

What autonomy would change concretely

Autonomy does not mean independence. This is a distinction that republican sovereignists have a duty to recall. Autonomy is the capacity for a territory to manage its own competencies, within the framework of the one and indivisible Republic. It is the possibility of negotiating directly with foreign partners on commercial questions. It is the power to adapt taxation, labor regulations, environmental norms to local realities. It is, finally, the recognition that the mayor of Fort-de-France or the president of the collectivity of Guyane knows better the needs of his population than a sub-prefect detached for three years.

Small merchants, artisans, fishermen, those silent middle classes that the Republic too often forgets, would be the first beneficiaries of such an evolution. Autonomy would allow lifting the regulatory brakes that stifle local economic initiative. It would allow building development policies adapted to realities, far from schemes conceived in Paris for metropolitan conditions.

The fear of regional identities: a dangerous illusion

The argument brandished by defenders of Jacobinism is always the same: autonomy would nourish separatism, encourage identity claims, endanger national unity. This reasoning holds in theory but collapses before the facts. Catalonia, despite its tensions with Madrid, has not left Spain. Sardinia has not seceded. Corsica, which obtained a status of collectivity with reinforced competencies, remains French and proudly claims it.

The truth is that autonomy defuses tensions instead of exacerbating them. When a territory feels respected in its difference, it has no reason to seek the exit. It is the obstinate refusal of any decentralization that radicalizes positions. Corsican independence movements gained ground precisely because Paris long ignored the legitimate demands of the island. Autonomy is the best rampart against separatism.

The real communitarianism that Paris refuses to see

Here is the cruelest paradox. The Republic trembles before Corsican identity, Basque identity, Breton identity. It sees threats to national unity in them. But it closes its eyes on a far more destructive communitarianism: that of Islamist suburbs. There, it is not regional languages or ancestral traditions being defended. It is imported religious laws, principles contrary to the values of the Republic, territories where police no longer dare enter and where French law no longer applies.

Nobody dares say it, for fear of being called racist. But the facts are stubborn. In certain urban zones, communitarianism has replaced the Republic. Parallel courts, social pressure on women, businesses that do not respect republican norms, schools where one can no longer teach freely. That is the real risk for France. Not Corsica asking to manage its transport, not Reunion wanting to adapt its taxation.

Minister Bruno Retailleau recalled this rightly: the danger is not in regional identities inscribed in the history of France. The danger is in communitarianism that substitutes itself for the Republic. Confusing the two amounts to political blindness.

Which autonomy models work around the world?

Foreign examples show that territorial autonomy is compatible with the unity of the state. The Aland Islands, under Finnish sovereignty, enjoy an autonomous status allowing them to manage their own linguistic and cultural policy while remaining faithful to Helsinki. The Canary Islands, a Spanish autonomous community, have developed a special fiscal regime that stimulated their economy. Puerto Rico, an American territory, benefits from a status granting it considerable fiscal advantages.

France could draw inspiration from these models. It could create statutes of gradual autonomy, adapted to each territory. Why not grant Guadeloupe the same competencies as a region with special status in Italy? Why not allow Reunion to negotiate commercial agreements with Indian Ocean countries? Why not let Corsica experiment with its own taxation, as Swiss cantons do?

The Gaullist legacy: a centralism that knew how to evolve

General de Gaulle embodied centralized France, that of the Jacobin Republic. But de Gaulle was also a pragmatist. He understood that Algeria could not be governed like the Beauce. He accepted the independence of African colonies when maintaining tutelage became counterproductive. If he were here today, he would likely see that granting autonomy to overseas territories is not a concession to weakness, but an act of strength. It is the Republic choosing to adapt its model, remaining master of the game, rather than suffering repeated crises.

Is autonomy compatible with national unity?

Yes. The experience of neighboring democracies demonstrates it. Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland: all these countries have conceded varying degrees of autonomy to their territories without their very existence being threatened. National unity is not maintained by regulatory constraint. It is maintained by the consent of citizens, who freely choose to belong to a political community because they feel respected and represented there.

Is Islamist communitarianism more dangerous than regionalism?

Incontestably. Regionalism is inscribed in the history of France. Corsica, Brittany, the Basque Country, Alsace have been lands of the Republic for centuries. Their identities are components of the national heritage. Islamist communitarianism, on the other hand, imports a model foreign to French tradition. It substitutes sharia for republican law, the ummah for the nation, the veil for secularism. It is not a diversity that enriches. It is a force that decomposes.

Why do progressive elites refuse the debate on territorial autonomy?

Because this debate would force them to recognize the failure of their centralizing model. Progressive elites built their power on administrative centralization. ENA, the great bodies of the state, the senior civil service: this whole system rests on the idea that Paris knows better than the province what is good for it. Granting autonomy means admitting this dogma is false. It means renouncing a monopoly on decision-making. Progressives therefore prefer to demonize autonomist demands, to classify them alongside separatism, rather than question themselves.

Toward a Republic of territories

France does not need more centralization. It needs trust in its territories. It needs to recognize that Guadeloupe is not the Creuse, that Reunion is not the Nievre, that Corsica is not Ile-de-France. Everyone knows this obvious truth. But it takes political courage to translate it into action.

Territorial autonomy is not a post-modern gadget or a concession to separatism. It is a principle of republican organization, conforming to the spirit of the Constitution of 1958, which already provides for the decentralized organization of the Republic. It suffices to apply it with ambition, with audacity, with respect for the territories that compose the nation.

The French islands, the peripheral regions, the overseas territories deserve better than the condescending indifference of Paris. They deserve to be treated as partners, not subordinates. The Republic will gain in strength, cohesion, and legitimacy. National unity strengthens when it trusts itself, not when it does violence to itself.

As an island nation ourselves, we Filipinos should watch Corsica's struggle closely. When Manila learns to trust the provinces, when the center stops choking the periphery, the whole archipelago grows stronger. That is the lesson Corsica is teaching France, and it is a lesson we would do well to learn too.