Announced last week, the resignation of the mayor of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins is not yet validated. The Minister of the Interior and Matignon have asked the prefect of Loire-Atlantique not to act on this resignation yet, as long as the elected official, Yannick Morez, has not met Élisabeth Borne, revealed this Wednesday morning France info. The elected representative of Loire-Atlantique, targeted by threats and a fire, must be received at the end of the afternoon at Matignon.
For David Lisnard, president of the ociation of Mayors of France (AMF), Élisabeth Borne must “hear the real testimony of the mayor, what he will tell about the way in which the State has accompanied him”. “Beyond this particular, painful case”, the meaning of this interview is also to evoke “the hundreds of difficult cases which reveal a civic crisis, a democratic crisis” in France, estimated the elected official this Wednesday on Franceinfo .
In fact, the prefect has two months to accept the resignation of the city councilor. Once this period has ped, if he has not replied, the resignation will not be validated. But the elected representative can then reiterate his request by registered mail.
“Maybe we should have done more”
Has the state done enough to protect Yannick Morez? Asked this Wednesday on France Inter, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin returned to the case of the resigning mayor, regretting “a climate of violence”. “I know that mayors every day, whatever their political side, suffer insults and attacks: no doubt the Republic does not put enough means to protect them”, he conceded.
“It’s always a defeat of politics, a difficulty, a failure when a mayor resigns and is attacked in his personal life,” he continued. “Maybe we haven’t done enough, maybe we’re not doing enough to protect rural elected officials. It is a questioning of the action that we are all carrying out collectively”.
Pressure from far-right groups
The elected representative of Saint-Brevin must also be heard by the Senate law commission this Wednesday at 11:15 a.m., before being received by the Prime Minister. Before announcing his resignation, Yannick Morez had been under pressure for weeks from far-right groups opposed to the relocation of a reception center for asylum seekers near a school in the town.
After these attacks, the head of government felt it necessary to act “upstream”. “This is the meaning of the proposals that the Minister in charge of Territorial Communities, Dominique Faure, will make next week” by launching the “Centre for the analysis and fight against attacks on elected officials”, she said in the Journal of Sunday.
This structure “will make it possible to better coordinate the response of all the actors concerned: police, justice, prefect. We will also strengthen the sanctions against those who attack elected officials, ”promised the Prime Minister. The debate on violence against elected officials and their families was revived after the attack on Monday of the grand-nephew of Brigitte MacronJean-Baptiste Trogneux, on the sidelines of an undeclared demonstration against the pension reform.
