Elected mayor of Tourcoing, Minister Gérald Darmanin will accumulate caps

Exit the jurisprudence of Lionel Jospin according to which a minister cannot direct a local executive. Gérald Darmanin was elected, may 23, mayor of Tourcoing (North), a function which he intends to combine with his ministerial portfolio. Admittedly, the rule introduced in 1997 remains unwritten but Prime Minister Édouard Philippe made it his own by hammering in September 2019: "Each minister can be a candidate" for the municipal elections but "when one is a minister, one cannot cumulate with the head of a local executive ". 

What pride and honor to be elected Mayor of #Tourcoing this morning by the Municipal Council. Thank you to Tourquennoises and Tourquennois who trusted us by doing #LeChoixDeTourcoing! pic.twitter.com/TVZBS3YeJ5

The list of the Minister of Action and Public Accounts had won hands down in the first round, on March 15, with 60.9% of the vote against record abstention (74.6%). Gérald Darmanin was therefore elected without surprise mayor, at the Saturday morning meeting of the municipal council of Tourcoing, the second largest city in the North, behind Lille, with 100,000 inhabitants.

The 37-year-old man therefore finds the seat he had occupied between March 2014 and September 2017. Already upon entering government in May 2017, the young minister had waited almost four months before giving up his chair to a faithful and to become first deputy. And at the end of January, when he officially entered the campaign, he displayed color without detour. "If I am at the top of the list, it is to be mayor," he proclaimed in La Voix du Nord.         

Sustainable accumulation over time? 

Already in late January, Gérald Darmanin boasted of having obtained the green light from President Emmanuel Macron to accumulate a time. According to several concordant sources, the Élysée just like Matignon authorized him to put on the two caps. "They told him banco," says a tenor of the majority.

The head of state seems determined to keep by his side this minister who had imposed himself at the start of the five years as one of the heavyweights of the government. And, faced with the economic and financial crisis following the Covid-19 epidemic, it must prepare the key text of the amending finance bill, debated at the end of June in Parliament.

It remains to be seen whether he will be able to accumulate until the cabinet reshuffle, which is looming in the coming weeks or months. Mayor and Minister, "I think it is not healthy to combine the two in the long term," replied the person in January. A way to tell Emmanuel Macron that he could eventually choose Tourcoing.

Gérald Darmanin announced on Saturday that, during the cumulative period, he would "obviously not" receive his municipal allowances, paid to the Society for the Protection of Animals.

@GDarmanin announces that he will pay his mayor's allowance to the SPA as long as he is in the cumulative position ... #Tourcoing pic.twitter.com/Hp0ZU3Vevy

With AFP 

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