merger of municipalities, loss of proximity and citizen frustration

In the vast parking lot of Boissey, one of the historic villages of Saint-Pierre-en-Auge, in Calvados, around ten hunters gather early in the morning. On the program, deer and wild boar hunting, but we don’t have to insist long to introduce them to the effects of their new commune, created in 2017. A group of recriminations erupts: inconsiderate purchases to water the plants “instead of renovating our Christs and our Virgins”, investments concentrated in the town center*, and above all the feeling of having been presented with a fait accompli, without consultation.

“This new commune was imposed on us,” contests Didier Pelois, the game warden. It’s like the Treaty of Lisbon signed by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 while the French voted no to the European Constitution in 2005, it’s like 49.3 today… I already didn’t vote much, I won’t vote this time in the municipal elections.”

Mergers decided between elected officials

Since 2014, 2,680 villages have merged to form 845 new municipalities. Saint-Pierre-en-Auge, with nearly 7,300 inhabitants, is one of them. A territorial upheaval unprecedented since the Revolution, initiated by the State in the name of efficiency and rationalization. Extended after-school hours, shared services, renovated church, creation of equipment, redone roads: mayors praise the resources and investments made possible by these new municipalities.

Arguments that the government intends to use to relaunch, after the municipal elections, the merger process which has slowed since the Covid-19 pandemic. There remains the central issue, that of proximity and a feeling of belonging, in municipalities bringing together two to twenty-two villages, on territories of up to 500 km2. During the previous election, in 2020, geographer Gabriel Bideau observed a higher abstention of around 6% in the new municipalities. A sign of increased disinterest, while these groupings have most often been decided between elected officials, without direct consultation of residents

A loss of common sense

In the streets of Saint-Pierre-en-Auge, the feeling of political distance is very strong. Internationally, between Donald Trump, Greenland, Venezuela and Iran, residents have the feeling of being spectators rather than actors. On a national scale, political life seems just as distant to them, mired in endless budgetary debates and political games in the National Assembly. This feeling of being sidelined is now spreading to their own commune. Many will vote in March, because municipal elections always allow us to have a grip on daily life. But the new municipalities, their real skills, their contours and their effects remain largely misunderstood, arousing more indifference than support.

“I don’t really see any change in my life today,” confirms Ghislaine, encountered in the pouring rain in Vieux-Pont-en-Auge, a historic village in Saint-Pierre-en-Auge. Maybe in the future, but today, no. I imagine that Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives (most populous municipality in the grouping, editor’s note) enjoy it more. But I’m not sure that it changes anything for small towns like ours.”

Here, as in other new towns, as we move away from the town center towards the villages, the feeling of lack of fairness and loss of proximity grows. After school, the post office, the café or the doctor, it is now local political power that is moving away. And some common sense too. Cutting a hedge or clearing a busy road become challenges. The municipality is becoming bureaucratized: the request must now go back to the central administration which then deploys its agents, according to the priorities of the agenda.

“A denial of democracy”

At the Bar de la Fontaine, in Boissey, Delphine Lechap, the owner, and Jean-Claude Beaumois, her neighbor, list their grievances: unmaintained cemeteries and parking lots, information that no longer circulates despite the delegated town hall… “The war memorial is Jean-Claude who cleans it,” says the voluble shopkeeper. In ten years, my property taxes have exploded, but I don’t have more services, even more Christmas decorations.” In Vieux-Pont-en-Auge, the distance takes a concrete form: the polling station was moved eight kilometers away, to Thiéville.

“People from here don’t go there anymore. It’s a denial of democracy,” says Michel Sady. For him, the vote was an opportunity for the village to come together. “Yes, our 36,000 municipalities were expensive, but it was our culture. They have shaped the country’s extraordinary network of roads and paths.” Founder of an association to prevent his church, one of the oldest in Normandy, from being lost among the twenty-five religious buildings maintained by the new municipality, he relays a widely shared concern: elected officials at the head of ever-larger territories end up losing detailed knowledge of the field.

Saint-Pierre-en-Auge covers 145 km2, or one and a half times the surface area of ​​Paris, so proximity inevitably becomes a challenge, increased by the risk of the inhabitants gradually dropping out. They are less involved in local volunteering, such as festival committees and other associations. This feeling of dispossession is such that it sometimes creates divisions

“It was better before”

Some of these new sets have already demerged. In Orée d’Anjou (Maine-et-Loire), a collective denounces the erasure of local specificities. In Fillière (Haute-Savoie), Palmas d’Aveyron (Aveyron), demerger lists are trying to be put together… In Saint-Sauveur-Villages (Manche), two lists out of four present themselves with such a program! And if they have no chance of winning the town hall since they are banking solely on the vote of the inhabitants of their respective towns (Le Mesnilbus and Ancteville, 353 and 216 souls, against 3,200 for the whole), the challenge is elsewhere: showing the prefect, the sole decision-maker for the demerger, that the inhabitants are behind them.

Beyond personal political rivalries, the rationalization of the municipal level has created parochial disputes where everyone sees if their neighbor, now aligned on the same tax bases, has roads in better condition, equipment that they do not have, a cemetery that is better weeded. The same refrain often comes up: “it was better before”, there were more activities, more maintenance, and the mayor was within shouting distance…

But there is no inevitability. It all depends on the scale of the mergers. The new municipalities which bring together a limited number of villages, often of comparable size – half of them only bring together two towns – thus seem to experience this companionship better. And restoring democratic proximity remains possible, believes Christophe Robert, supporter of this new level and candidate in Saint-Pierre-en-Auge. “My first commitment is a deputy mayor who lives in the historic town. But also the deployment of a mobile town hall, a truck which will travel with an elected official and an agent throughout the thirteen towns in the region. The objective is to bring life and power back to historic villages, particularly through municipal commissions open to residents.”

Recreating a collective identity

Elsewhere, in Charny Orée de Puisaye (Yonne), Sèvremoine (Maine-et-Loire) or Loireauxence (Loire-Atlantique), other levers are proposed by the candidates: more autonomy left to historic municipalities via budgets dedicated to small expenses, establishment of citizen advisory councils, etc. “We must be extremely attentive to the activity of the towns and the perception that the inhabitants have of them, as well as to the distribution of facilities. Here, a nursery and a leisure center were built in one village, a sports complex in another, the association center in the third,” explains Damien Grasset, outgoing mayor and candidate for his succession in Montréverd (Vendée).

Finally, there remains the question of common identity, the slowest to build. “In terms of identity, Thue et Mue still remains a concept,” recognizes Michel Lafont, mayor of this town between Caen and Bayeux. We launched a competition to choose a gentile, brought artists into the villages, and organized an annual traveling festival. But it’s always the same 20 or 30 people who follow.” Creating a collective identity takes time, often a generation, elected officials agree. On this scale, a municipality is not decreed, it is built.

* The term center town designates the village, generally the largest, in which the elected mayor sits.

The mess of new names

By what toponymic trick can we associate Saint-Martin-Sepert, Saint-Pardoux-Corbier and Saint-Ybard?

Corrèze elected officials have opted for “The Three Saints”! 845 new municipalities, there are so many new names to find, taking care not to upset one or the other. When a central city stands out or already has a tourist or economic reputation, we often keep the toponym, adding a complement: Saint-Pierre-en-Auge comes from Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives and its surroundings, Hesdin-la-Forêt d’Hesdin and its neighbors.

In Loire-Atlantique, Belligné, La Chapelle-Saint-Sauveur, La Rouxière and Varades have made a clean sweep of the past to give birth to Loireauxence in reference to the territory’s two rivers. History and heritage can be evoked, as in Formigny-la-Bataille (Calvados) or Beauce-la-Romaine (Loir-et-Cher).

Other names are less understandable at first glance. La Drenne (Oise) corresponds to the first letters of the Flood, Ressons l’Abbaye and La Neuville d’Aumont when the “Ter” of Terval (Vendée) is a reference to the three communes of the territory. Much more successful than Capavenir-Vosges, the name chosen for the merger of Thaon-les-Vosges, Gimont and Oncourt. Faced with the outcry, the new commune then took back its name of Thaon-les-Vosges.