The heatwave (once again) casts a chill between the mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, and the deputy Éric Ciotti

"He said that demolishing the Acropolis had created drafts. I tell him to stop stirring up trouble and tackle the real problems." On his X account, MP Éric Ciotti is filmed standing in front of the Port school in Nice, in the heart of his constituency. The controversy at the start of the week? The heat in schools. Not all of these schools are equipped with air conditioning, far from it, or even fans, as demonstrated by the investigation conducted by Green elected officials two weeks ago ( Nice-Matin, June 20).

The likely mayoral candidate for next March's municipal elections has taken a swipe at Christian Estrosi, who has offered parents the option of picking up their children as early as 12:30 p.m. on Mondays and Tuesdays to prevent them from getting too hot. For the past two weeks, almost the entire country has been plunged into sweltering heat. More than fifty departments are sweltering, including the Alpes-Maritimes, which is still on orange alert.

"There is a hideous building on the harbor."

In close-up, the UDR (Union of the Right for the Republic) MP calculates, facing the camera: 1,000 classrooms in Nice and around 1,000 euros for air conditioning, "that's an expenditure of one million euros."

"In the port of Nice, there's a building that was built, which is hideous, horrible, a hangar to accommodate the UNOC congressmen. It cost nearly 30 million euros. So we could have done thirty times more for our schools," asserts the man who aims to take the mayor's seat of Nice with his allies from the National Rally.

"Dear MP scrogneugneu…"

Action... reactions, in a chain. Estrosi's lieutenants are organizing the response on social networks. As deputy Jennifer Salles, or Pierre Fiori, the municipal councilor delegated to Works in Schools, reminds us. Pêle-mêle: "98% of dormitories are air-conditioned, 100 classrooms have ceiling fans, 600 portable fans have been distributed, etc." Special mention for deputy Gaël Nofri, who calls out Éric Ciotti on X: "Dear deputy scrogneugneu." A term which, according to Le Petit Robert , describes "a grumpy old man."

And the three elected officials challenged the MP on the colleges, which, they swear, are hardly better off in terms of cooling equipment. "The chairman of the Department's Finance Committee should start by air conditioning the colleges before giving lessons to other local authorities. As always with Éric Ciotti, it's a case of the straw and the beam," Jennifer Salles countered.