Make sense of... the role of mayors in France
Responsibilities include maintenance of communal roads, and civil services such as registering births, marriages and deaths
There were 34,874 mayors in France at the last count in December 2025
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The role of mayor – and of municipal councils in general – has been going through significant changes. Successive governments pushed for a new layer of local government, usually called a communauté de communes (CdC), whereby individual communes group together to supposedly offer better services.
CdCs can now be responsible for some of the traditional activities of the mairie, in areas such as waste management, water treatment, economic development projects, highway maintenance, housing and urban policies, and healthcare, cultural and sporting facilities.
Mayors are still responsible for the finances of the commune, and for communal buildings and equipment, including primary school buildings and canteens, but not for the teaching and running of schools, which are under the control of the education ministry through unelected regional rectorates.
Other responsibilities include maintenance of communal roads, and civil services such as registering births, marriages and deaths. Mayors or their deputies also preside over marriage ceremonies, which are typically held at the town hall.
Mayors are often the first to know when residents are in difficulty and make sure social services, usually provided by the department, are alerted to needy cases.
They have limited police powers over matters such as issuing fines for littering, fly-tipping, for not keeping dogs under control or other minor public order offences.
In larger towns, the council decides whether or not to have a municipal police force, under the command of the mayor, and how police officers should be armed.
The mairie can advise with planning applications and – for smaller projects – approve a déclaration préalable de travaux. It has the carte communale, a map of the commune that shows which parcels of land can be built on.
It is also the place to go if you require an attestation to prove residency, or for information about recycling.
At other times, the mairie is a source of information. Its secretary is usually well informed and happy to give out details of local doctors, dentists, artisans or sports clubs and societies.
They are often employed on a shared job basis with other communes, and handle the reception of the public, and the pages and pages of bureaucratic paperwork from the department and prefectures sent out to mairies. With their legal and administrative training they can greatly help mayors.
Mayors receive a stipend for their position, depending on the size of the commune. For communes of 500 inhabitants or fewer it is now €1,017 a month before tax and charges, rising to €3,421 for communes of 20,000 to 49,000 people.
A different scale applies for large towns, with the mayor of Marseille, for example, receiving €5,600 a month.
Deputy mayors can be appointed with specific remits, such as for roads or social affairs. They usually receive a stipend half that of a mayor.
