A few hours before meeting with Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, Yannick Morez, the resigning mayor of the town of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins (Loire-Atlantique), was heard this Wednesday noon by a committee of senators. He re-explained at length the context of his resignation: the project to build a reception center for asylum seekers (Cada) supported by the State, the rise in power of the protest coming from a collective supported by the extreme right, “articles on social networks”, “insults”, “threats”, “despicable leaflets”. Until the attack which targeted his home on the night of March 21 to 22. “Probably an explosive device thrown between my two vehicles. They caught fire and it spread to my home. We were in the house. Luckily we were woken up by the noises. Everything was burning. (…) I took a blow on the head that day. »
Yannick Morez also re-expressed his feeling of a “flagrant lack of state support”, explaining that he had repeatedly alerted the gendarmerie, the public prosecutor, the Loire-Atlantique prefecture of the existence of threats. “We really felt like we weren’t taken seriously. The elected official also criticizes the authorities for not having followed up on his request for reinforced protection after the attack on his home, or for not having banned the demonstration organized by the far right in his town on April 29. “There was damage, a burned car, a lot of damage. I wrote on April 30 to the prefect to deplore his lack of support and ask him for reimbursement of the damage. »
“We didn’t want to live this anymore”
It was ultimately insults received by an activist from the collective while he was on the terrace of a café on the weekend of May 1 that convinced Yannick Morez to give up. “We didn’t want to go through that anymore, my wife didn’t want to meet that kind of person anymore. This is the reason why I decided to resign. And leave town. “A well-considered decision, he assures us, even if he did not expect “this resignation to cause so much turmoil”. “I had time to think things over. I will not go back. Anyway, I had decided not to represent myself. »
Bitter, Yannick Morez also returned to the statements of the prefect of Loire-Atlantique, Fabrice Rigoulet-Rose, on May 11, ensuring that state support had been “permanent”. “When the prefect says that he has organized public meetings: on the part of a prefect, lying brazenly in public… He represents the State all the same. He knows very well that he did not organize public meetings. We have all the evidence. Just ask him for the date, he won’t be able to provide one. (…) When he told the press that he spoke to me regularly on the phone: the day I submitted my resignation was the second time. As for the sub-prefect, I had him on the phone the day of the fire, never again. »
Concluding his hearing, Yannick Morez hopes that his resignation will at least have been useful to other mayors faced with similar situations: “if I can at least finish this political career by having moved the lines for mayors. The constraints are more and more important”.