This elected official from a town devastated by storm Alex, five years ago, is desperately looking for a new insurer to protect the 70 municipal buildings, which have no longer been covered since 1is January.
The mayor of Breil-sur-Roya (Alpes-Maritimes), Sébastien Olharan (Les Républicains), signed a decree on Thursday prohibiting any natural disaster on his territory, to protest against the impossibility of insuring the buildings of his commune, on the border with Italy and very affected by storm Alex in 2020. The town of 2,200 inhabitants had been insured for more than 20 years with Smacl, a company now backed by Maif and which remains one of the few, along with Groupama, still on the community insurance market.
But, in June, Smacl announced its intention to terminate all Breil-sur-Roya contracts at the end of the year. And despite his efforts, the mayor could not find an insurer. He only obtained at the last minute from Smacl a one-year extension of compulsory insurance in terms of functional protection and liability for damage caused to third parties, as well as for the circulation of municipal vehicles.
On the other hand, the approximately 70 municipal buildings (town hall, school, nursery, library, etc.) have no longer been insured since 1is January: in the event of a disaster, all repair costs will be borne by the municipality. Therefore, “natural disasters are prohibited throughout the territory of the municipality”announces the first article of the municipal decree, which cites “fires, floods, landslides, earthquakes, landslides, storms, snow, hail” but also “riots, terrorism, vandalism, theft, involuntary damage”.
“Answer through the absurd”
“Faced with an inconceivable and unjust situation, endangering our municipality, our public heritage and taxpayers’ money, I am reduced to this absurd response”explained the mayor in a press release, calling for urgent reform of the community insurance system.
-Sébastien Olharan had also filed an appeal with the Nice administrative court to order his historic insurer to maintain the contract for at least one year, pending a potential new agreement. But the court considered, on December 31, “that it is not up to the administrative judge to intervene in the execution of a public contract”. “The measure requested by the municipality faces a serious challenge, such as to justify the rejection of its request”the court said in a press release on Thursday evening. A rejection “for incomprehensible reasons”said Mayor LR of Breil.
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Breil-sur-Roya is in fact not a unique case: according to a consultation carried out in February 2024 by members of the Senate Finance Committee, 60% of the 713 responding communities had encountered at least one significant problem with their current insurer. 2023. Some 20% had their contract terminated at the initiative of their insurer, sometimes with very short notice. Nearly a third had seen their contract subject to an amendment, almost always with an increase in contributions.
Another mission carried out at the start of 2024, at the request of the government, by the mayor of Vesoul Alain Chrétien (Horizons) and the former president of Groupama Jean-Yves Dagès, also revealed the deterioration of relations between communities and insurance companies, which is accentuated with the riots of June 2023, leading to “brutal terminations” and “sometimes dizzying increases in premiums and deductibles”.
