Several mayors, this Tuesday, did not respond to the call of the annual meeting of the Association of Mayors of France, and for good reason: they resigned in recent months, exhausted by the harshness of their function. “A certain number of mayors explain the weight of their responsibilities, linked obviously to financial matters, but also to the attitude of some of our fellow citizens: the threats, the tone with which we speak to them, the attacks“, replies Catherine Vautrin, Minister of Territorial Partnership and Decentralization, who recalls that the government is following them, “by training them, supporting them“.
“At the request of Michel Barnier, the text on the status of elected officials will be included in the National Assembly in January, we started from a bill passed by the Senate“, she announced, while the parliamentary path of this text had been interrupted by the dissolution.
“The ability of mayors is to save on their operations to invest”
But are communities responsible for the country's poor financial situation? “All the experts demonstrate that the estimate of expenditure in the middle of the year is always false, and that we must start from the executed accounts to know what exactly the mayors' expenditure is.“, replies the minister. “And the ability of mayors is to save on their operations to generate a capacity to pay for their investments, this is what the vast majority of mayors do.“, she recalls, she who has been elected in Reims for years.
And so in the budget there are five billion euros of savings announced for 2025, some actually saw 11 billion: “Our figures are five billion“, assures Catherine Vautrin. “I would have reacted as an elected official, but also as a citizen: we are playing on the sovereignty of the country, the idea is to do it with moderation“, she replies. “Having met the senators, the subject is if we don't take these five billion from the communities, where do we take them?“
While Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Jordan Bardella announce the end of the government, she responds: “I believe that our fellow citizens do not want chaos. The important thing is that we continue to move forward, my goal is to work on these subjects every day.”
