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The Local Authorities Reform Committee, whichwas created in November 2008 and chaired by former Prime Minister Édouard Balladur,submitted its report in March 2009. This article examines the reasons for having an ad hoc committee do this work, emphasises the scale of obstacles hampering reformers and questionstheir strategy for change. It highlights the pressures affecting the work of reformers, who aretempted to introduce radical changes due to associated budget issues but face major constitutional and political obstacles. It sets out a number of hypotheses regarding the varyingparliamentary feasibility of the different solutions proposed by the Committee.