Paris (AFP)

His name is Michel Martin, 63, is retired: here is the robot portrait of an outgoing mayor, drawn from the National Directory of elected officials less than two months before the municipal elections.

This Ministry of the Interior database, which lists all of France's elected officials, was last updated on January 14, 2020.

- From 25 to 97 years old -

The average age of an outgoing mayor is 63 years.

Mayors are, on average, significantly older than MPs (51) and members of government (49). Their age is, on the other hand, comparable to that of senators (62 years).

A large majority of mayors (88%) are between 50 and 79 years old. At the margin, 1.4% of them are under 39 and 1.8% are over 80.

The youngest mayor of France, Rémy Dick (LR), is 25 years old. The one who is still a student took in 2016 the reins of the municipal council of Florange (Moselle, 12,100 inhabitants), whose blast furnaces today closed were, in 2012, under the Holland presidency, at the center of a standoff political and trade union. He is seeking a second term.

Marcel Berthomé (unlabeled), 97, dean of outgoing mayors, also announced that he would seek a new term, his tenth at the head of his city of Saint-Seurin-sur-l'Isle (Gironde, 3,200 inhabitants) ), which he has directed since 1971.

- One in six mayors is a woman -

On average, 17% of mayors are women.

Feminization is even lower (14%) in cities with more than 30,000 inhabitants.

On the other hand, among the 10 most populous cities in France, three are headed by women: Anne Hidalgo in Paris, Johanna Rolland in Nantes and Martine Aubry in Lille.

In comparison, the Senate (33%), the National Assembly (39%) and the government (49%) are significantly more feminized.

The younger the mayor, the more likely he or she is to be a woman: 22% of mayors under the age of 60, 16% of mayors between 60 and 69, and 13% of mayors aged 70 or over.

The proportion of women is lowest in Reunion (4%), Martinique (6%) and in the northeast of mainland France (9% in Moselle and in the Haut-Rhin). At the other end of the scale are Val-de-Marne and Guadeloupe, with 28% women.

However, women represent 38% of assistants and 43% of ordinary municipal councilors. Logical, since the lists of candidates must be equal and respect the alternation between men and women in municipalities with more than 1,000 inhabitants.

- Mayor of the fields ... -

The biggest difference between city and rural mayors is their socio-professional category.

Of the nearly 35,000 mayors present in the National Directory of Elected Officials, the overwhelming majority of whom are at the head of small municipalities, nearly 14,000 are retirees and nearly 5,000 are farmers.

- ... or mayor of cities -

The panorama is quite different in the 280 cities of more than 30,000 inhabitants, where the mayor often comes from higher socio-professional categories.

No profession dominates all the others, but the most represented categories are, in order, executives and senior executives of the private sector (12%), lawyers (8%), public service retirees (7% ), category A civil servants (6%), political officials (5%), industrialists and business leaders (5%), large state bodies (3%) and faculty professors (3 %).

This typology resembles that of deputies and senators.

- Last name: Martin, First name: Michel -

The most common first and last names are Michel (1,354) and Martin (135). Unsurprisingly, since Martin is also the most common surname in France.

But only four city officials are called Michel Martin.

Data source: https://www.data.gouv.fr/fr/datasets/repertoire-national-des-elus-1/

© 2020 AFP