Can a mayor, like any employee, be absent for maternity leave?
Yes, but it's not simple, regrets the councilor (Les Écologists) of Poitiers Léonore Moncond'huy.
The 33-year-old elected official, who will be absent for two months from mid-March, points to legal problems concerning her remuneration and replacement.
If the mayor is unable to attend, she must be replaced by her deputies, in protocol order.
But the employer of his first assistant
“refused to give him a total discharge”
, which he is not obliged to do, she explains in
Le Monde
.
“We are faced with an impasse
,” she underlines, believing that
“the law does not offer solutions to be replaced during the duration of the interim period”
.
Loss of pay
Ultimately, two elected officials will act as interim head of the town of 90,000 inhabitants: the first deputy who managed
to “free up the equivalent of half-time”
and the second deputy who used accumulated days in his time savings account.
The situation also poses a problem of remuneration, regrets Léonore Moncond'huy.
“Mayor’s office allowances are suspended during this compulsory absence”
and
“this loss of income is not fully compensated
,” she explains in an interview with
La Nouvelle République
.
“It’s not so much a question of money as a question of principle,”
she explains to Le
Monde.
In France, maternity leave recognizes the right of women to benefit from an income maintained for the legal duration.
I don’t ask for more, other than to be treated like everyone else.”
Change the law
The councilor calls for changes to the law to better take into account maternity and paternity leave for elected officials.
Improving the
“status of the elected official”
is one of the projects launched by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who indicated that he wanted to rely on ongoing parliamentary work, without specifying whether the government was considering a bill.
A transpartisan bill proposed by the Macronist MP Violette Spillebout and the communist Sébastien Jumel is notably being prepared in the Assembly.
“I hope that the proposals we made via (the association of elected metropolitan officials) France Urbaine and the Association of Mayors of France and directly to the Minister of Local Authorities, Dominique Faure, will be extended to paternity leave. and adoption leave
,” explains Lénonore Moncond’huy.
In Laval, Mayor Florian Bercault stepped aside for a month at the beginning of February for paternity leave after the birth of his second child, entrusting the keys to the city to his first deputy, as during his first in 2021.