She hurriedly crosses the parking lot of this restaurant in Quimper, Thursday October 3. Emmanuelle Rasseneur, 47, apologizes for the delay. There was a crowd at the post office from where she sent the letter of resignation from her mandates as mayor (various left) of Gourlizon (Finistère), village of 937 inhabitants, and first vice-president of the community of communes of Bigouden High Country. In the envelope addressed to the prefect of Finistère, the elected official slipped a seven-page text detailing her decision to put an end to more than fifteen years of political commitments. “I’m exhausted. It was time for me to think about myself and protect myself. I hope that the prefect will read my report to understand the systemic mistreatment of mayors”breathes Emmanuelle Rasseneur.
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The forty-year-old fixes her azure gaze on that of her interlocutor when she explains her discomfort which echoes that of so many elected officials. A wave of resignations is shaking up the country’s municipal councils. The number of stops is “exceptionally high” according to a survey by the Association of Mayors of France and Cevipof, entitled “Mayors committed but prevented”.
According to this study, published in November 2023, some 1,300 mayors and tens of thousands of municipal councilors threw in the towel between June 2020 and July 2023, an increase of 30% in the number of withdrawals compared to the previous mandate. In Finistère alone, the prefecture has seventeen mayors who have resigned since June 2020. Emmanuelle Rasseneur is therefore the eighteenth. Another imitated him too ” worn ” by the distrust and aggressiveness of some of its constituents. This is Patrick Tanguy, 64 years old, mayor of Juch, the neighboring village of Gourlizon.
“Expert in everything” for 1,800 euros
In front of a steaming coffee, Emmanuelle Rasseneur continues: “Mayors, particularly of small towns, work in permanent insecurity. Our missions are increasingly complex in a context of lack of resources and general support. I felt the legal risk was getting closer so I preferred to stop before ending up in court. » Supported by only a technical agent and two administrative staff at Gourlizon town hall, the elected official describes her years at “tweak” particularly when drafting town planning files or public contracts, which are always more technical due to “legislative inflation”.
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And then, there are these calls in the middle of the night to report a suicide, these injunctions to improvise a plan to shelter the population a few hours before a storm, these compulsory hospitalizations of a person threatening to kill her neighbor… Emmanuelle Rasseneur had had enough of being an elected Swiss army knife supposedly “be an expert in everything” et “available at any time” for 1,800 euros net monthly. A part-time civil service executive for a long time to carry out her mandates, she is annoyed: “Even when I took out my trash on Sunday evening, there was always someone to call out to me with this phrase: “Hey, it’s good that I see you!” If I had the misfortune to cut it short, I was criticized for not listening to my fellow citizens. »
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