Mouse Negotiation - 11/12/17

Mouse Négociation

A few months ago, Mouse, the world largest entertainment conglomerate and the French government signed a Master Agreement to create the EuroMouse development in Marne La Vallée. The agreement was controversial and had a very bad impact on the communities surrounding by the project. In this negotiation, the four mayors of Chessy, Bailly, Coupvray and Magny were discussing with 2 representatives of the government and 2 representatives of the company Mouse to find an agreement on the damage they are suffering from the construction. During this negotiation, I was the mayor of Bailly and my main concerns were find a solution for the administrative nightmare created by the construction, the bad impact on the life conditions of my residents and reach an amount for a financial compensation in the form of annual payment. In alliance with the 3 other mayors we also had concerns about the overwhelming volume of permit requests, the need of a community planner to deal effectively with the enormous changes resulting from the EuroMouse project. Before the negotiation, with the 3 other mayors we agree on the amount on the annual payment we want: 3 million.

I was really disappointed of this negotiation because we spend too much time on small issues, we had too much difficulties to make the negotiation go further because none of us was able to take initiatives and my partners were not synchronized. There was a lack of preparation and organization. My counter partners were not that implicated and concentrated during the debate and it was very difficult to find an agreement. To rectify that, we took various breaks to recalculate our positions and what we really want from the government and the company. Sometimes, the other mayors didn’t let me speak and we talk all together at the same time. I was feeling a little bit bad at the end of the negotiation because we had to redefine objectives which were very clear at the beginning and we always had to redirect the debate on the main issues. For me, the main point was the financial compensation and we spent too much time on less interesting point like the values of Mouse. To improve our negotiation, I thought that a speaker for all the group who manage the discussion was necessary. I try to lead the discussion but it was quite hard to be listened. Personally, I saw this debate as a messy negotiation without very constructive arguments and no real plan to follow.

However, at the end we managed to find an agreement in the framework of a win-win negotiation.

These were the various issues we agreed on:

• Agree to hire a community planer employed by the government and extra administrative assistants for each community.
• Help of a French consultant from EuroMouse to manage the construction of the project
• The government will build stronger roads
• Make a press release with good publicity for the project with a financial compensation
• Annual payment during the construction of $2 million and after a 2% annual payment
• The mayors will stop the blocs of the farmers of their communities to let the construction continue.