LR David Lisnard is worried. It must be said that local elected officials are increasingly throwing in the towel. The president of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF) is therefore alarmed that the “resignations of local elected officials are reaching an unprecedented level”, against a backdrop of “civic crisis”, “discouragement” or even “attempts to intimidation” of the city councilors.
“We can already say that out of 1/5th of the AMF’s departmental associations, these resignations concerned 238 mayors, 773 deputies and 2,976 elected municipal officials, i.e. nearly 4,000 elected officials who resigned since the start of their mandate in 2020”, warns the mayor. of Cannes in an interview with Figaro Monday.
A phenomenon “revealing the civic crisis”
“We can therefore say that throughout France, the threshold of 1,000 resigning mayors has been exceeded. This trend is even faster than during the previous mandate, during which departures had already doubled,” laments David Lisnard. “These figures confirm an alert rating, because the resignations of local elected officials are reaching an unprecedented level,” he warns.
According to the president of the AMF, “this phenomenon is indicative of the civic crisis that is expressed in all areas, in a country marked by increases in abstention, attacks, etc. Perhaps we are also facing a crisis of commitment, which we already perceive in the associative world with the decline in volunteering”.
The fear of a “discouragement of vocations”
The municipal exercise “is a bureaucratic headache”, which “wearies and gets worse” and “the multiplication of constraints remains the first cause of discouragement”, explains the mayor of Cannes. “Incivility weighs” also, he underlines, describing “attacks on social networks” which “target reputations and affect the honor of elected officials”, “disparagements” even “attempts at intimidation” .
“We can fear a discouragement of vocations, as is increasingly the case. (…). Passion is still very present in many town halls, but beware! “, insists the president of the AMF. The alert is now launched.