They assimilated the culture, learned the language, paid the taxes and served as public representatives in their adopted home nations, but from March, hundreds of Britons serving as municipal councilors in cities and towns in France will no longer be eligible to hold office, or vote.
As the UK departs the EU after a near half-century alliance, small-town French mayors, especially, are dreading the pending “colossal loss” of a key political resource.
“It is hard to find motivated people in a small town,” said Perriers-en-Beauficel Mayor Lydie Brionne of a Normandy town where two of the 11 municipal councilors are Britons.
Photo: AP
Just like other citizens of the EU, Britons have since 2001 been entitled to stand in local elections in France, except for the position of mayor, which is reserved for French nationals.
They lose the right after Brexit becomes official at midnight, though they will be allowed to serve out their mandates until fresh local elections in March.
No longer EU citizens, Britons in France also lose the right to vote in local elections.
Brionne said that Perriers-en-Beauficel — population 216 — would struggle to find replacements when its British duo are forced to retire.
One of them is Patrick Head, 64, originally from Wiltshire, England, and the 28th Briton to buy a house in the sleepy French commune.
In 2014 — 10 years after moving there — he received by far the most votes in a local election, but despite this massive show of support, he will be “fired” shortly, a “very disappointed” Head said.
“We will miss Patrick because he helps us a lot,” added Brionne, explaining he is a key link between the local authority and the 50-odd Britons living in its corner of Normandy.
“For the last 20 years, many Brits have moved here, they have repopulated the town and given it dynamism,” she added.
After Brexit, “I fear that they will be obliged to go back,” Brionne said.
Far from an isolated case, similar fears exist in other towns where Britons have put down roots.
Of France’s 35,048 municipal councils, 712 have British representatives — 757 councilors in total.
They make up almost a third of the nearly 2,500 foreign representatives among France’s nearly half a million local councilors.
In Poupas, a town of 85 inhabitants in the south of France, three of the 11 councilors are from across the English Channel. Two have obtained French nationality, which means they remain eligible to serve.
“It is a colossal loss,” Poupas Mayor Pascal Guerin said of the Brexit-induced upheaval.
British residents of Poupas “are perfectly integrated into the town life, even more than the rest of the population,” he said. “For them, Brexit is a total aberration, they are taking it very badly.”
“One councilor even cried when Boris Johnson was elected” British prime minister on a pro-Brexit ticket, Guerin said.
Allison Mackie, a 63-year-old from Scotland, is one of two British representatives on the council of Bellegarde-du-Razes, a town of 240 people in southern France.
She has lived there since 2011 and is heartbroken that she would no longer be able to serve her community as an elected official.
“We built our house here, we pay taxes here, we consume here, but we are scrapped from the voters’ list,” she said.
Jouac Mayor Virginie Windridge, the 39-year-old head of a town of 180 residents in central France — is married to a British man.
She finds it “very unfair that people who have been here for years, pay their taxes and contribute to community life will overnight have no right other than to ‘shut up and pay.’”
“It is hard to swallow,” Windridge said.
The two British councilors for the town play an important role in the community, she said.
“They bring new ideas, a different way of operating and of viewing things,” she added.
France is home to a little more than 157,000 Britons, making it the biggest expatriate British community after Spain, British data showed.
Outside Paris, large numbers are to be found in Brittany and the southwestern Dordogne region.
British expats are often credited with breathing new life into dying parts of rural France, taking over homes and businesses abandoned by younger people flocking to the cities.
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