MPs vote to increase local elected officials' compensation

In the National Assembly, MPs once again battled on Tuesday evening, July 8, over the issue of elected officials' remuneration, and approved a sliding scale increase in the compensation of deputy mayors for towns with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants, as part of the examination of a text on the status of elected officials.

MPs approved a government amendment, slightly modified by the Law Commission, which provides for a sliding scale increase based on the size of the municipality, from 10% to 4%. The measure primarily increases the value of elected officials in small communities. The bill, originally proposed by the Senate, is expected to be approved in its entirety at first reading on Thursday or Friday.

On Monday, MPs approved an amendment amid confusion that would increase mayoral compensation on a sliding scale, from just under 8% for municipalities with fewer than 500 inhabitants to around 1.4% for municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. François Rebsamen, Minister of Regional Planning and Decentralization, expressed the wish that the two measures be harmonized, which could lead to a second vote on mayoral compensation.

The Senate version of the text proposed a uniform 10% increase for all municipalities. But the government, in unison with the majority of parliamentarians, wanted to concentrate the increase on the smallest municipalities, in the interest of savings. A few rare voices were raised against this increase, with Horizons MP Marie-Agnès Poussier-Winsback, for example, deeming the debates "completely out of touch," while the government is seeking 40 billion in savings.

The deputies also approved, against the government's advice, an article which aims to grant one quarter of retirement per mandate to local elected officials, up to a limit of eight. The Minister of Labour, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, denounced a measure "exorbitant under common law" , consisting of granting "quarters of retirement (...) without any financing in return" and creating "a new burden which increases the deficit of our pension system by more than 45 million euros per year" .

Renaissance MP Violette Spillbout, on the other hand, defended the measure, inspired by an advantage granted to firefighters in 2023, and demanded by associations of elected officials, because many of them "have to work very part-time, sometimes see (...) their careers go backwards, promotions go backwards, because they do not commit themselves in the same way to professional life and they devote a lot of time to their mandate as elected officials" .