the government wants to strengthen the protection of elected officials

The debate on the safety of elected officials was revived by the mayor of Saint-Brevin, Yannick Morez, who resigned after being targeted by arson and threats from the far right. The elected official, who deplored the “lack of support” from the state, will be received on Wednesday May 17 by Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne. ” It’s intolerable. Attacking an elected official is attacking the Republic, ”she said in an interview with Le Journal du dimanche on May 14.

“If we have been insufficiently reactive, we will mobilize more to protect elected officials in the face of the increase in violence”, promised the head of government, wishing to act more “upstream”. Elisabeth Borne confirmed that the Minister Delegate for Local Authorities, Dominique Faure, will launch on Wednesday a “center for the analysis and fight against attacks on elected officials” to “better coordinate the response of all the actors concerned: police, justice , prefect.

“We do not touch the mayor”

The resignation of the mayor of Saint-Brevin caused an electric shock. On Wednesday, he will also be heard in the Senate, during a joint hearing of the law commission and the fact-finding mission on “the future of the municipality and the mayor in France”. For their part, the associations of elected officials are mobilizing, forwarding their recommendations to the government.

The president of the Association of rural mayors of France (AMRF), Michel Fournier, thus supports the idea of ​​a “status of the elected official, other than the current one, which would make it possible to clearly identify the mayor as a representative of the state”. He suggests “organizing, each time you take office, an official ceremony on the taking of the oath”. This would “establish the authority of the state” and “demonstrate that we do not touch the mayor”.

Shorten the delays of the penal chain

“We are also going to strengthen the sanctions against those who attack elected officials”, assured Élisabeth Borne in the JDD, without further details. The president of the AMRF Michel Fournier believes that “heavier sanctions would be necessary”. But he wants “above all” that “the execution of the sanction is immediate to demonstrate that, if we attack the function of mayor, we risk a lot”.

An opinion shared by Philippe Laurent, vice-president of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF): “The legislative arsenal is relatively important but the problem is that it is not applied. It does not work ! He thus recalls that the mason, who had fatally knocked down the mayor of Signes Jean-Mathieu Michel, with his van, after illegally unloading rubble, in August 2019, was sentenced to one year in prison in March 2022. According to Philippe Laurent, “we are too far from the facts to the sanction, it is necessary to shorten the deadlines of the criminal chain”.

The associations of elected officials are finally worried about a crisis of commitment. The representative of rural mayors Michel Fournier believes that they deserve “a revaluation to better exercise their obligations”, especially since “dangerousness” is added to a function already “undressed by intercommunality and various constraints”.

Source