Expats angry at losing vote in French villages they help keep alive
As rain beats down on their ancient farmhouse, Andrew Nixey and his wife Margaret tuck into Stilton, Wensleydale and Cheddar cheese with chutney and some locally-made pork pies.
The scene could be set in Mr Nixey’s native Tetsworth in Oxfordshire.
In fact, while even the pies were made by a British butcher, this is deepest rural France.
Saint-martial-sur-isop is a small village halfway between Limoges and Poitiers in the department of Hautevienne. The Limousin cows are firmly French but among its human population of 138, about 50 are British.
The Nixeys were among the first English settlers to arrive 20 years ago with their two children. Now most of their farmer neighbours are from the UK and a British-run bar, tea room and bed and breakfast has just opened up.
In nearby Saint-barbant, a third of the 300 villagers are from the UK.
“I had never thought of moving to France but the land was cheap and a young farmers’ scheme provided financial aid and low-interest loans. It was still Europe and not far from England,” Mr Nixey recalled.
As they set about raising prime Limousin beef, the pair got stuck into local life, with Margaret helping at the nearby church and teaching English at school while Andrew joined hunters on boar shoots.
Within two years, he was asked to represent the municipality and has been on the town council ever since, helping the mayor – who speaks no English – deal with fresh waves of Britons lured by low-cost flights to Limoges and Poitiers.
Now, however, the idyll of Ententecordiale looks set to end.
As EU nationals, Britons were allowed to vote in European and municipal elections in France, and run for the town council.
But France has stripped the country’s estimated 160,000 British residents of these rights.
That means that Mr Nixey and roughly 900 other British municipal
‘Where would we be without them? Nowhere. They helped me get elected as mayor and now they can’t take part in local democracy’
councillors around France will not be able to run for re-election in March.
The only solution is to apply for French nationality – but with an expected wait of up to two years.
The local mayor Pierre Bachellerie, 70, a retired sheep farmer, is devastated. “The English keep this village alive. There is a great atmosphere. Where would we be without them? Nowhere,” he said, pointing out that out of 70 people at its new year party, only two were French.
“They helped me get elected and now they can’t take part in local democracy,” he added.
As for having a Briton on the town council, he said: “It’s a great shame. I get on really well with Andrew.”
The council’s responsibilities cover everything from maintaining local roads to dealing with sewage treatment and neighbourly disputes.
It recently helped “digitise” the community’s cemetery, and also oversees street lighting.
But now the future for the English people involved in such initiatives is decidedly in the dark.
Like Mr Nixey, some locals have asked for French nationality, with requests rocketing in the Hautevienne from 58 in 2017 to almost 1,200 in the past year. But many baulk at the obligatory French language and civilisation test and instead have applied for residency permits, which proffer no voting rights.
While Britons cannot vote in France, French and other EU nationals will retain their right to vote in local elections in the UK. The future in individual EU countries is mixed – for example the Netherlands will continue to allow British residents to vote and stand in local elections.
Mrs Nixey said: “We weren’t allowed to vote for or against Brexit and now we can’t vote in local elections. Surely that’s denying us a basic human right?”
Mr Nixey said that while he felt “definitely British” his home was in Saint-martial. “When it comes to voting, I don’t want to vote in the UK. I want to vote here,” he said. “It does seem crazily unfair that we get to pay tax but not to choose the people who then go on to decide how the money is spent. And for that, I blame the French more than the British.”