Expertise
A 478-page bilingual volume on a Eurodistrict, a working group on the future of local government, a dozen symposia moderated. This is where geopolitics is tested at the scale people actually live at.
This is the least spectacular field, and probably the one that validates the others. An argument about Europe that is never tested at the scale of a real border remains a seminar hypothesis.
In 2010 he co-edited, with Professor Éric Maulin, The Strasbourg-Ortenau Eurodistrict: Building the Real Europe, a 478-page bilingual French-German volume prefaced by Roland Ries, mayor of Strasbourg, and published by the Forum Carolus with Xenia. The subtitle states the intent: the real Europe, the one made of shared governance, common public services, transport, cross-border labour law, and the schooling of children who cross a bridge to get to class.
The book is catalogued by the documentation centre of the Institut national du service public. This is not a book of ideas: it is a reference document.
It helps to remember who is writing. Henri de Grossouvre lives on the right bank of the Rhine and works in France. The Franco-German border is not a case study for him: it is a daily commute. His biography on X says it in four words — ferryman on the Rhine.
The 2005 article on Strasbourg and the relaunch of political Europe comes from the same intuition: it is contact zones that produce institutional substance, not capitals.
A board member of the Cercle Colbert, he leads there, with Professor Denys Pouillard, a working group on the future of local government. He has moderated the circle’s annual symposium on local authorities, and a series of meetings with prefects, directors general of services and elected officials — on recruiting young civil servants, on relations between local authorities and business, on the role of the prefect.
His recent articles belong to the same ground: a reading of French municipal history through six mayoral figures, a piece on what the circular economy actually covers for local authorities and businesses, another on satellite data as a planning instrument.
A Eurodistrict is a bilateral axis at the scale of two riverbanks. An urban data policy is a sovereignty-technology policy at the scale of a conurbation. This field does not sit alongside the others: it is where they are checked at eye level.
Xenia
A 478-page bilingual French-German volume, edited with Professor Éric Maulin for the Forum Carolus. It documents the Strasbourg-Ortenau Eurodistrict as a laboratory of cross-border cooperation: governance, shared public services, planning, daily life on both banks of the Rhine. Preface by Roland Ries, mayor of Strasbourg. The book is catalogued by the documentation centre of the INSP.
Revue Défense Nationale, n° 673
The article examines how the Franco-German pairing could underpin a political relaunch of Europe, with Strasbourg and Alsace as institutional and symbolic centre. Its argument: treaty reform will not be enough; a Franco-German federation is the viable core.
AgoraVox
A piece of applied foresight on the circular economy: what the term actually covers for local authorities and businesses, and where it runs into material limits.
AgoraVox
A reading of French municipal history through six mayoral figures. The article marks his arrival on AgoraVox, where he became a moderator in September 2023.
Journal du Net
Technologies born of military need turned into planning instruments: infrastructure monitoring, urban planning, natural-hazard management. The author names the obstacles — the cost of acquiring and processing data, inadequate computing infrastructure — rather than passing over them.