“We cannot imagine that elected officials will fail,” but “if we are not careful (…) the risk is great, really very great, that a failure of mayors” will lead to a “democratic crash and even a terrible blackout,” declared Christophe Bouillon, president of the Association of Small Towns of France (APVF).

The mayors of small towns warned on Friday, through their president, of a risk of “mayoral breakdown” which, if they stopped fulfilling their mission, would lead to a “democratic crash”, calling on the future government to make social and territorial cohesion a priority.

“We cannot imagine that elected officials will fail,” but “if we are not careful (…) the risk is great, really very great, that a failure of mayors” will lead to a “democratic crash and even a terrible blackout,” declared Christophe Bouillon, president of the Association of Small Towns of France (APVF), meeting in congress in Amboise (Indre-et-Loire).

He referred in particular to the “unbridled inflation” of regulatory texts which, acco
rding to him, weighs on elected officials and prevents them from acting, to unfunded transfers of State powers, to insufficiently compensated tax cuts and to the repercussions of the various crises affecting the country.

Territorial blackout

And “if there is a territorial blackout, on the scale of citizens, of those administered, we are heading for disaster,” he added in front of the LR president of the Senate, Gérard Larcher.

Drawing up a bleak picture of access to housing in small towns (2,500 to 25,000 inhabitants), with “25% of young couples deciding not to have children due to lack of larger accommodation”, he also described a “medical nomadism”, which forces more and more citizens to travel “50 to 80 kilometres to find a doctor”.

Looking back at the outcome of the last elections, he said that anger was “taking root”.

“It is once again in the territories which suffer the most from the consequences of the disappearance of public services (…) or from the feeling of relegation that the populist vote
was expressed with the most force,” underlines the APVF in its final resolution.

The APVF, the first association of elected officials to organize its congress before the presentation of the draft finance bill, also calls on the government not to reduce the financial resources of local authorities, in particular to meet the challenge of the ecological transition.

Source: Burkina Information Agency