A Rebellion of Mayors In Small-Town France
SAINT- SEINE- SUR-VINGEANNE, France — As mayor of this village deep in Burgundy, Louis Gentilhomme presided over a seemingly idyllic patch — a few streets of stone houses, a 13th- century church, one baker and not much else.
But late last year, he wrote to President Emmanuel Macron telling him that the stress was too much. He could not stand watching his village of 400 wither anymore. “After 30 years, I’ve had enough,” he wrote. “The compromises, the unkept promises and the state’s withdrawal have used me up, morally and physically.”
This year, more than 150 French mayors have quit. The resignations echo the clash taking place between Mr. Macron’s drive to shake up France’s sometimes archaic institutions and a way of life that may no longer be sustainable.
Mayors have been a mainstay of French life since the revolutionaries of 1789 decreed that wherever a church steeple arises, there should be a mayor. No country on the Continent surpasses France’s 35,502 mayors. Twenty thousand of these towns have fewer than 500 inhabitants. But even before Mr. Macron came to office in 2017, France was confronting the question of whether it could still afford so many little fiefs. Under a 2015 law, small towns were ordered to combine into administrative units of at least 15,000 people.
Mayors are finding that presiding over the mairie, or town hall, is not what it used to be. Christian Le Bart, an expert in local government at Sciences Po university in Rennes, said, “They have the impression of being abandoned by the state, and of being more and more criticized by their citizens.”
The departures reflect the struggle of villages in rural France to remain alive while trapped in a spiral of shrinking revenues and declining populations. “We do everything,” said Jean- Claude Bellini, who recently quit as mayor of nearby Chaux. “It’s always, ‘call the mayor, call the mayor.’ ”
Over all, the state’s contribution to France’s towns had dropped to 30 billion euros, or about $34 billion, in 2017, when Mr. Macron was elected, from 42 billion euros in 2014. Mr. Macron has also vowed to cut the lodging tax, which makes up 10 percent of the average village’s budget.
“There’s a real threat to the financial autonomy of these towns,” said Ludovic Rochette, who heads the mayor’s association in the Côte d’Or department in Burgundy. The mayors, he said, had long felt disrespected by authorities in Paris, but they had hoped for change. He said: “But cutting out the lodging tax was the last straw. And we’ve all cut and cut, and now we’re down to the bone.”
In his letter to the president, Mr. Gentilhomme wrote, “My struggle for the survival of our countryside was misunderstood, and barely supported.”
The letter back from Mr. Macron promised to simplify the administrative regroupings. But that consolidation was what Mr. Gentilhomme had fought against.
“I walked to the mairie every day,” he said. “And they didn’t hesitate to call out to me, or even to come to the house. They think the mayor can do everything.” He added: “On your own turf, people think you are the good Lord. But in reality, you can’t do much of anything.”