INTERVIEW
"The situation in which are the 600,000 local elected representatives of this country and especially the 35,000 mayors of France is a situation that concerns me a lot," assured the minister to the Minister of Territorial Cohesion and Relations with Local Authorities Thursday morning on Europe 1. "We sometimes dropped the elected in the past more or less recent," said Sebastien Lecornu at the microphone of Sonia Mabrouk, before announcing a series of accompanying measures.
"The French State will take charge of psychological counseling"
In 2018, we deplore "361 acts" of aggression of mayors, of which "60% are insults or threats, verbal or on social networks," says the minister. "In 40% of cases, and this is even more worrying, we are on physical aggression, often mayors who are not in their office but who are in the field and who come into contact with a situation: a street that must be closed, a land that will be invaded by travelers ... It is at this time that the irreparable happens.We will take a number of very concrete measures.
"It is necessary to allow the mayors to go less in contact.It must allow them to touch the portfolio of a number of offenders," said first Sebastien Lecornu. "It's called the administrative fines: they are tools generally assigned to the prefect, we will make them come down to the mayors." Stressing that the penal response is "almost systematic" for the perpetrators of these attacks, the minister also mentions measures after the facts: "Today a mayor victim of aggression will have to pay of his own money the legal accompaniment: we will take charge of it. (...) And for the first time, the French state will also take charge of psychological counseling. "
The words of Jean Leonetti, "unacceptable"
As for the words of the acting president of the Republicans, Jean Leonetti, who denounced Wednesday the "contemptuous silence of power" in the face of attacks from local officials, Sébastien Lecornu sweeps: "These attacks, who commits them? Often people who are in taken with problems of alcohol, drugs It is the fault of the government that? (...) To leave it to think that it is the government, that it is the French State which would be responsible for the violences which are against the mayors, that's unacceptable. "