This Breton town resists the Post Office and refuses to Frenchify the signs of its 140 localities
The town of Plouégat-Guérand (Finistère) made the Post office bend. The 3DS Law on differentiation, decentralization, deconcentration and aimed at simplifying local public action, voted by Parliament on February 8, 2022, extended the addressing obligation — clearly identifying each building —, in the municipalities of less than 2000 inhabitants. For obvious reasons of geolocation, both for postmen and for delivery people or health and emergency services. “It’s a complicated subject in our rural communities where there is a lot of dispersed housing, slips the mayor, Renaud de Clermont-Tonnerre. Sometimes with localities (there are 140 here) where there are one or two houses…”
“We are not going to sacrifice the poetry of places for a culture of far-fetched efficiency”
For him as for the inhabitants, the idea of adding numbers to already existing addresses does not pose a problem. “But the postal services wanted to impose French words on us – alley, path, street, etc. — to localities, subdivisions, hamlets that have had a name and a history for generations. Refusal of the municipality, which pleaded that the law allows to keep the original names, as long as the houses are numbered, therefore identified.
What will happen in case of ****nymy? “We will add a precision, advances the city councilor. Kermaria, a locality that was built over several periods and where there are streets and dead ends that do not touch each other, could become Kermaria Nevez (new), or Kermaria Coz (old), Kervella Huella (top) or Kervella Izella (bottom). There are solutions that make it possible to stay within the law, and we are not going to sacrifice the poetry of places for a far-fetched culture of efficiency! »
The mayor has since been contacted by many Breton municipalities, some for whom it was already too late, but others who have inquired to follow his example.
