Why France’s small rural communes still matter

When I was studying for my politics degree, a long time ago, there was one subject that bored me: comparative local government. 

I knew that administering a country beyond the capital was important, but I could not get enthusiastic about its minutiae. Then I came to France.

I grew up in a Yorkshire village roughly the size of the French village I now live in. It had a parish council with no permanent headquarters and very limited powers. 

Mostly, strictly local decisions were taken in a town hall some miles away that I never set foot in. The mayor was a man with a gold chain who I only saw in newspaper photographs.

How different is my French commune! It only has 400 souls, and yet has its own mairie. This is open twice a week at set times and is within easy walking distance. I frequently drop in for advice or merely to find out stuff that is going on that I need to know about.

I know the mayor personally – where he lives and what his interests are – and he knows the same about me. We speak to each other as tu. 

As importantly, we have an excellent secretary in our mairie, who habitually goes beyond her job description to help a village resident in need. 

Both these people have been welcoming to Britons here who do not speak much French and do not know how things work.

All this, to me, is amazing. And yet, every year someone pops up out of the woodwork of the media to tell me that a system that works has got to be changed. 

France cannot afford to run 34,000 communes, each with its own mairie, mayor, secretary and councillors. Just over 50% of these communes have fewer than 500 inhabitants apiece. 

Rationally, it does not make sense. Doge-style cost-cutters salivate when they think of the savings that could be made if only the populace was more reasonable.

Small rural communes, these naysayers maintain, should be amalgamated, merged with larger jurisdictions or scrapped altogether. The services they provide should be given to other bodies or, better still, put online. 

Were my mairie to close in the interests of cost savings it would be a great loss. Our village has already lost its shops and its school is down to one classroom. 

Some procedures are carried out by the communauté de communes, of which we are a part, which does not feel any more responsive or locally focused than the more distant prefecture in our departmental capital.

The mairie is one institution that keeps the community together and works for our interest. It makes the distant Paris-based state feel like something we are part of, not an alien force that does what it wants to us. 

It is also the representation of democracy at ground level. At election time, we know (or know of) those neighbours who want to be on the council. 

The mayor oversees the counting of votes in front of anyone who wants to attend and we get an immediate snapshot of the politics of the village. 

I imagine that my commune looks a bit ridiculous to the smooth-talking énarques who run the country, and quintessentially parochial in the pejorative sense of that word. 

I am sure they could devise a ‘better’ system on their spreadsheets that delivers in financial and bureaucratic terms. 

Join the modern world: scrap the mini rural communes and beef up the urban ones in the market towns and there will be cost-savings galore, plus a reduction in the duplication of services. 

Much would be gained, I do not doubt, but so much more would be lost.