Paris (AFP)

The Association of Mayors of France (AMF) asks the government to renounce the threshold of municipalities of 9,000 inhabitants below which it asks the prefects to no longer assign political nuances to candidates for municipal elections.

The AMF proposes a revision of the circular of the Minister of the Interior in this sense, "by creating a grade category + unregistered or without label +, by renouncing the threshold of 9,000 inhabitants, without modifying the device of 2014", writes the association which brings together almost all of the mayors, in a press release issued on Wednesday.

The system introduced in 2014 set the threshold at which the results of the municipalities were subject to "nuancing" at 1,000 inhabitants.

"Shading" is an ancient practice by which the prefects assign a political color (Right, Left, DVD ...) to the lists and candidates, including those who presented themselves without a label.

The circular addressed to the prefects is attacked by the right as the left, who accuse the macronists of wanting to blur the legibility of the results by inflating the scores of La République en Marche.

"We were committed to granting the request of the Association of Rural Mayors of France and the Association of Mayors of France," said Interior Minister Christophe Castaner on Tuesday during the question and answer session. 'National Assembly, to justify its decision.

The AMF specifies that it "constantly asked that the nuance contain a category + non-registered and without label + allowing the candidates without political label to profit from a classification in conformity with their engagement".

"It is and remains the only request made by the AMF to successive governments which have not acted on it," she said.

The Castaner circular also creates a new shade, LDVC (for List of various centers), which is much contested by the opposition. This can indeed "be attributed to the lists of candidates who, without being officially invested by the LREM or by the MODEM, or by the UDI, will be supported by these parties".

"No other political party benefits from this possibility, which poses a problem of equal treatment between the lists of candidates," writes the AMF.

The Republicans and the National Rally have filed appeals before the Council of State to request the suspension (LR) or the cancellation (RN) of the circular from the Minister of the Interior.

First scheduled for Friday, the hearing of the Council of State was postponed to January 29 at 11:00 a.m.

The Association of Rural Mayors (AMRF) for its part welcomed in mid-January the limitation of "rough nuance", which it said should "imperatively apply for municipalities with less than 3,500 inhabitants", the threshold of rural communities.

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