Paris (AFP)
The president (LR) of the Senate Law Commission, Philippe Bas, questioned Jean Castex on the issue of mayors' security in a letter sent after the violent attacks suffered by several elected officials.
"These acts of violence highlight the insecurity with which mayors continue to be confronted in the exercise of their daily missions", reacted the senator of La Manche, quoted in a press release.
"The mayors embody public authority in its expression closest to our fellow citizens (and) the Republic cannot leave them alone in the face of the risks to which their function exposes them", he stressed.
Mr. Bas wrote to the Prime Minister after the assault a week ago of the mayor of the small village of Gironde Saint-Philippe d'Aiguille, who had protested against the nightly noise, and that of an elected representative of Port-Bail- sur-Mer (Manche) which "sought to enforce municipal decrees on wild camping and forest fires," said the press release.
In his letter, the senator recalled that the Law Commission had presented recommendations last October following the death a year ago of Jean-Michel Mathieu, mayor of Signes, a small town in the Var, overthrown by a pickup truck whose occupants he wanted to issue for having thrown rubble on the side of the road.
Some of the commission's proposals had "quickly found a concrete translation", such as "the strengthening of the police powers of mayors and their legal protection", but others "have remained without action to this day", regrets Mr. Bas.
The senator recommends in particular that a "system of systematic support for mayors attacked should now be put in place" in each prefecture.
The Prime Minister denounced last Wednesday on Twitter "facts" and "unacceptable violence" following the attack on the mayor of Saint-Philippe d'Aiguille.
On July 31, the Association of Mayors of France had also denounced in a press release "all these acts, which unfortunately illustrate the climate of insecurity faced by elected municipal officials in the exercise of their functions", following five attacks on municipal officials in early July.
© 2020 AFP