French mayors have been stepping down at an unprecedented rate, with almost 2,200 resignations since 2020, according to a report by the Association of Mayors of France (ASM).
“Between July 2020 and March 2025, 2,189 resignations of mayors were recorded by the Ministry of the Interior. The rate peaked in 2023 with 613 resignations,” said the the report published on June 19.
The frequency of resignations would likely diminish as the next municipal elections were set for 2026 in France, it added.
According to the data, 31 per cent of the mayors who had quit cited political tensions within their municipal councils as the main cause.
“Their decision to resign was the result of disputes, arguments, conflicts or other disagreements within the municipal council, sometimes with elected members of the opposition, sometimes, and this is the most frequent case, within the majority,” the report read.
One of the most well-known examples of such tension in France was the case of the first transgender Mayor, Marie Cau, who resigned in 2025, citing a “toxic” environment and transphobia.
Political difficulties often resulted when a municipal council lost a third or more of its members, after which new elections must be held within three months. Thus, many mayors found themselves in an uncomfortable situation with the arrival of a raft of new members.
The report also cited “scheduled handovers” and the health of elected representatives as causes of the high rate of step-downs.
“They [the hand-overs] follow a well-oiled logic in which the mayor elected in 2020 announces at the start of his mandate, or even his election campaign, that he will be handing over mid-term,” it said.
“Sometimes for reasons of age, for reasons of seniority or longevity in office, these mayors have very often done the municipality a service out of a purely civic spirit to avoid a vacancy in the post.”
Cities with fewer than 4,000 residents were the most affected by this mass resignation phenomenon.
The reports also revealed that new mayors elected in 2020 accounted for 53 per cent of the resignations, illustrating a “disappointment effect” among these relatively new entrants to the office.
It was also pointed out that the mayors in this term period were put in place under unusual conditions during the crisis of Covid-19 and, surprisingly, most were voted in during the first round of municipal elections.
“The 2020-2026 term will have been unlike any other. It began with the Covid-19 crisis and is ending in a climate of national instability following the dissolution of the government and a difficult financial situation,” the report said.
The French Government is due to work on a draft law “creating a statute for local elected representatives” which was first adopted on March 7, 2024 by the Senate.
The Bill aimed to provide responses to “the crisis in local involvement”, notably by improving the material and social conditions under which local elected representatives exercised their mandate, as well as protecting them.
France’s first transgender mayor Marie Cau, who was elected in 2020, has resigned from office citing a “toxic” environment and transphobia. https://t.co/CQDC4GCf8n
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) January 16, 2025
