Does the new Prime Minister François Bayrou have the right to remain mayor of Pau?

François Bayrou was criticized for choosing to go to Pau to attend the municipal council as mayor instead of going to Mayotte.

François Bayrou will remain mayor of Pau. The Prime Minister justified his position “by the break between the base of French society […] and the circles of power”. He also said he was in favor of reauthorizing the accumulation of mandates for parliamentarians. But by participating in a municipal council meeting in Pau on Monday, December 16, he incurred the wrath of the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, who would have “preferred that the Prime Minister take the plane to Mayotte”.

An authorized accumulation…

Being both Prime Minister and Mayor is permitted by law. If a minister cannot remain a parliamentarian and must leave his seat as deputy or senator to his deputy, he has the right to remain mayor of his city.

Article 23 of the Constitution states that being a member of the government is incompatible with “the exercise of any parliamentary mandate, any professional representation function of a national nature, any public employment or even any professional activity” but local mandates are therefore not included.

In 2014, when the law to regulate the accumulation of mandates was passed, it was prohibited, for example, for deputies and senators to occupy a local executive function – to be mayor in particular – but we did not apply this rule to ministers. François Bayrou can therefore remain mayor of Pau, it is legal.

…but which has gone against custom for almost 30 years

Since 1997 and the appointment of Lionel Jospin to Matignon, not combining the two has been an unwritten rule in the law. He then asked members of his government to resign from their local executive functions. His predecessor Alain Juppé (1995-1997) remained mayor of Bordeaux just like Jacques Chirac who from 1986 to 1988 held Matignon and the town hall of Paris.

But since the Jospin government, Jean-Marc Ayrault appointed to Matignon in 2012 had given up his city of Nantes, Edouard Philippe that of Have and Jean Castex that of Prades, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, a town of 6,000 inhabitants.

François Bayrou therefore breaks with the practice of the last 30 years but which in recent months had already been damaged. Several ministers from the short-lived Barnier government had in fact retained their local mandates like Rachida Dati, undoubtedly due to the current political instability.