To be discovered within the present
On March 15 and 22, the French go to the polls for the municipal elections. Mayors are elected for six years, however increasingly hand over their mandate earlier than the top of their mandate. Their resignations reached an unprecedented stage throughout the mandate which is ending.
According to a current Cevipof report, dissensions inside municipal councils are the main reason for mayors’ resignations. Jean-Jacques Noël, mayor for 15 years of the village of Cirey-lès-Bellevaux, in Haute-Saône, resigned in 2023 “because of a deep disagreement” with three municipal councilors.
He regrets an more and more polarized and brutal political local weather: “Before, the atmosphere was friendly in the municipal councils. Now, it’s a fight. We are transcribing what we see at the country level, when they fight at the National Assembly, at the local level. It’s lamentable.”
The weariness of rural elected officers
For Jean-Jacques Noël, it is a household story: his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather have been additionally mayors of Cirey. Over the generations, companies and public companies have disappeared from the village heart. “The mayor talked at the bistro with the residents, we opened the abscess regularly, we defused the problems. Today, there is no longer really a place for discussion in the villages and things are getting worse on social networks.”
The former mayor deplores an erosion of human contact, in favor of administrative duties: “Mayors spend too much time making files, we fill out tons of them. It’s an administrative millefeuille and the standards change all the time.”
Preserve your well being and privateness
Picking up an aged one that had fallen in the course of the evening, reducing down a tree after a storm…Jean-Jacques Noël was extraordinarily out there to his constituents. “The burden of the town hall is enormous. I preserved my health by resigning. I already had a stroke in 2011, I didn’t want to have a second one.”
Like him, Sophie Rivens, first feminine mayor of the village of Adrets, within the Alps, mixed her capabilities as mayor and her work. A administration place on the hospital, evening shift. Exhausted, she resigned in 2022, barely two years after her election: “I missed a lot of family time and even when I was present, I was always preoccupied by a community issue. I had the impression of leaving my daughters’ lives, it was unthinkable for me.”
The mayor’s compensation alone was too low to permit him to depart his job to dedicate himself solely to city corridor. Since December 2025, mayoral compensation has been elevated, due to a brand new legislation. It additionally permits, amongst different issues, to mix these advantages with these of maternity or maternity depart upon the start of a kid. A legislation on the standing of native elected officers was adopted on December 22, 2025.
Incivility and violence
Local elected officers are probably the most accessible representatives of authority, inside attain of indignant residents. They are due to this fact the principle victims of incivility, even violence. In 2024, 82% of assaults on elected officers are directed in direction of mayors and municipal councilors, in comparison with 13% in direction of parliamentarians (deputies and senators).
Jean-Claude Nevers was a sufferer. Elected mayor of Montfleur in 2014, he obtained threatening letters. On October 25, 2022, he even found these phrases tagged within the municipal cemetery: “Nevers, you will die.” Three municipal councilor autos have been additionally set on hearth. For the previous mayor, probably the most traumatic occasion stays the fireplace on the city corridor, on the evening of January 26, 2023. “There were two simultaneous fire outbreaks and we found an additive, used to make the fire as violent as possible. This is proof that it is criminal.”
Jean-Claude Nevers doesn’t resign instantly in order to “not give in to those who commit this type of thing.” A very brutal municipal council assembly on the finish of 2025 is the final straw. In December 2025, he submitted his resignation, accepted by the prefect in January 2026, two months earlier than the top of his mandate.
In 2023, the shock resignation of the mayor of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins after the arson perpetrated at his residence led to a number of measures: the creation of the Center for Analysis and Combating Attacks on Elected Officials (CALAE), with safety techniques. In 2024, a brand new legislation will increase the penalties in opposition to those that assault elected officers.
https://www.france24.com/fr/%C3%A9missions/c-est-en-france/20260316-pourquoi-les-maires-jettent-l-%C3%A9ponge