In 1936, Léon Blum conceived, as soon as he came to power, a new, realistic and coherent policy, taking into account the lessons of experience. Assimilation will be strongly encouraged in the colonies already very committed to this path. On the other hand, the broadest association will be loyally practiced in the protectorates and the territories under mandate. Finally, French policy will be coordinated and harmonized in the Islamized regions.
Consequently, the President of the Council created a High Mediterranean Committee. He developed with Maurice Viollette, former Governor General of Algeria, a project bringing to the electorate a first tranche of 25,000 Algerian Muslims keeping their personal status. Its Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Pierre Viénot, negotiates agreements with Syria and Lebanon giving these countries, which are very advanced and under mandate, their almost complete independence, while keeping them in France's zone of influence. .
Contacts are made in Tunisia with the Neo-Destour of Habib Bourguiba. Marius Moutet, minister for overseas France, set up a commission of inquiry, which would have been more justly and more happily called the reform commission, and had Governor Delavignette, a liberal spirit, study a vast program of local works. , useful above all to the natives. In Morocco, General Charles Noguès, appointed Resident General by Léon Blum, renewed very good relations with Sultan Sidi Mohammed and developed, in full agreement with him, a major program of political, administrative, financial and economic reforms. Finally, Pierre Viénot, Robert Montagne and Sébastien Charléty, rector of the Paris Academy, opened the Center for Advanced Studies in Muslim Administration (C.H.E.A.M.) in Paris, where civil and military administrators and civil servants from North Africa will come to confront, with their counterparts in Syria
and Lebanon, their experience of Muslim countries.
All this good effort fails because of the coalition of the classic right, of certain radicals, representatives of major economic interests, with local socialists, spokespersons for the "little whites", threatened in their privileges. Only remain, after the fall of the Léon Blum cabinet, the High Mediterranean Committee, work of General Noguès in Morocco, and the C.H.E.A.M.