Meeting the Maire for the first time...

[Lavie]

Do you take a little gift (ie. perhaps a bottle of whisky) or not?

I've read magazine articles that say yes, you do.

Other mags say no you don't becusae the Maire is an official and a gift could be seen as bribery or similar!

So what has anyone here done?

[Tresco]

I would say no, s/he's an official. The only time I would take a gift here for someone I did not know would be if I was invited for a meal (flowers etc)

When we went we were pretty clean and smart, he was covered in the dirt of his trade, had to rush off, and left us with one of his assistants. After all the worrying, it was incredibly informal and easy.

tresco

[Val_2]

Definately not. The maire is a government official and is paid a remuneration. We,as councillors are not even allowed to accept gifts either unless we can eat it or drink it all together in the safety of our room.

[Ormx]

Didn't really know, so we brought the bottle of whiskey and he accepted it as if it was the done thing. He does seem friendly whenever we meet him now and sure it'll be no harm if ever we do need "help" with something.

[Charallais]

We live in a tiny commune, 190 people in the whole commune. The mayor is our next door neighbour. Our first encounter was when she came and asked how many of us would be living here, we answered two. How much rubbish will you make? No idea!

Our next meeting was two days later when she arrived and took from the back of her car two rubbish bins! One for ordinary rubbish the other for recycling, with the calender of collection dates.

Since then she has made sure we join in with as much as possible in the commune. We have only given her one thing, a photgraph of her sons taken at a fete. She was thrilled. We found her difficult to understand at first but her broad Burgundy accent has grown on us and Yvonne is now a good friend as well as our mayor.

[Mysfloss]

Can I ask which magazine you read this in?

[Teamedup]

These meeting the Maire things always have me amused and scratching my head.   Not all idylic country life is as it seems. And one really never knows, well initally one doesn't as to how power plays and local politics affect village lives.There was that tv program about the split village in the bourgogne, some villages will be fine but there will certainly be those with the inhabitants at one another's throats.

Our last Maire was wonderful, the current one, well,  he is known by a wonderfully terrible nickname by a lot of this village, so it isn't just me who cannot stand him.

The other thing is that I've never heard of anyone 'introducing' themselves like this. In small communities there always was a real chance that we would bump into the Maire when we had to go and get our carte de sejours sorted out and the endless times we would have to ask for the fiche d'etat civile and or familiale. The paperasse in the past was a constant part of life here. It was all very natural though and one got to know the staff at the Mairie and the elus, Maire included for better or worse. I suppose these days as the paperwork frankly is next to nothing now, one still has to go into the Mairie for something, or one just goes to the local functions, if one wants to be part of village life.

 

And as to giving a present, well, very strange notion. I can't help wondering why and where the idea of this pressy giving thing started.

[BJSLIV]

Its just continues the habits of Victorian explorers who would give a few cheap baubles to the locals when  they were  colonising the savages.

[Miki]

Yes, we thought of giving our Maire a mirror but he had sod all for us, so we took it back.

We never gave it a thought, why would you give the Maire something ? unless you felt a bribe might be useful but I reckon it would have taken a lot more than that to get our first old sod of a Maire to go a bit, shall we say, dodgy !!

 

 

 

[Ormx]

Oh dear, looks like we're the only ones who did this, I'm surprised as I too had read it in a magazine (some kind of House and home type with a special on France) but more importantly a French friend who had moved down from Paris (and would never have done such a thing there) said he found it was correct procedure in his small village. So we took his advice. Is there anyone else who did?

[Teamedup]

There has been so much building and newcommers in our village over the last few years (all french) that our Mairie organised a welcome evening at the Mairie about 4 years ago, open to eveyone so that the newcommers could meet their fellow villagers.

I thought that that was a very good idea, especially as the Mairie was then starting to put the brakes on future building schemes.

And the other thing is that if you become a french resident you can vote for in local elections. It would surely be in the Maire's interests to introduce themselves to you a prospective voters than the other way around.

[Lavie]

It looks like the replies here are going to be as varied as the various magazine articles i read!

Some said you don't offer a gift as it could be misconstrued. 

Others say you should give a little something!

Every article has said that you should make the effort to go and meet the maire though, so at least that seems to be a cert!

As for a gift, guess i'll have to ask my (french) neighbours and see what they suggest! 

[Teamedup]

Lavie, I would say that it was in no way a cert. I don't know where this came from, but it has never been a cert.

And your neighbours might think that this is an english thing, and make a suggestion anyway.

Do you know anything about your Maire. Truth is that any Maire could be from the extreme right (or left) for that matter and someone you may not even want to be sharing air space with never mind sucking up to with a cadeau.

 

[Pangur]

Our immoblier actually let the Marie know we had moved into the area and we went down to 'introduce' ourselves and register for voting in local and European elections (which probably will do more to get the Mayor onside than a bottle of whiskey ) and spoke to his secretary, who was keen to know where we worked etc.  I think the introduction is more so the Marie knows who is living in the village and can claim the relevant money, rather than an opportunity for you to make friends!

We then got a lovely letter, welcoming us to the village and inviting us to a Bonne Année evening in the local community hall where all the local bigwigs made their yearly speech to the commune.  Have to say, it was v nice to see community involvement at a local level (although maybe the free kirs and galette made a big difference). 

[Tresco]

I'd also seen things in magazines about taking a small gift, and have certainly read on this forum in the past that people have done so. Others have invited the Maire and partner to their homes for aperos, or even meals.

The way I looked at it was this, firstly, s/he's an official. If I moved house in England I didn't go down to my local councillors office with a gift. Secondly, As TU points out, (and what she said had me doing the old LOL) I don't know the guy/gal. Why would I invite a stranger into my home?.

By the way, I reckon ours knew in nanoseconds that we had bought our house, it's a commune of less than 300, and they all seem to be related in some way.

tresco

[Patf]

I certainly wouldn't give our mayor a gift. In the first place we've had nothing but petty complaints from him from the start and second he comes from one of the wealthiest families in France ( supermarket chain.) On the other hand his secretary has been most helpful and more or less told us not to take any notice of M. le M. so I think we should really have given her something, at least a New Year card. Maybe next year...Pat.

[Lavie]

"I think the introduction is more so the Marie knows who is living in the village and can claim the relevant money, rather than an opportunity for you to make friends!"

I like the way you're thinking, (!) but the Marie is approached by the notaire during the house sale process so he/she is aware that a property has just changed hands. Looking at the info from my notaire the marie had to confirm in a simple document any building plans, public rights over my land etc.

Has anyone living in a commune of <1,000 NOT introduced themselves to the Maire?

[Alexis]

We have been living in this commune for nearly four years now and I haven't even SEEN Madam le Maire.  I have often been in the Mairie and know the staff but she has never been there.

The Maire in the last commune was the opposite and always around.  We got married there.  Arrghhh!

 

[SaligoBay]

Yup, never set eyes on him until we'd been here for 2 years, when he did his social duty and turned up chez nous at 9am on the day of our very own domestic tragedy, i.e. about an hour after it happened, the dozen pompiers and 3 doctors had only just gone.   Nice enough chap, but meeting him has made no difference whatsoever to our lives.   Insert Gallic shrug smiley here.   

[Mistral]

I've met our maire quite a few times now. Mostly at fêtes and foires because if there's a chance he can get his picture in the paper, he's there. We get delivered the  municipal magazine once a month (very glossy) and he usually manages to have at least one photo of him on every page and his name in the first paragraph of every article.

We never thought of going and introducing ourselves when we arrived here (in 1993) but since there are around 25,000 people in the commune, I don't think it is expected. You would probably end up greeting an ajoint. The town we lived in before was even bigger and the maire had political ambitions so he was more often at the assemblée nationale than in the town.

[Loiseau]

I think our exceedingly upright Maire would be horrified if he was offered a present.

A few years ago we put on a concert in our local church (well, my daughter and a group of baroque instrumentalists), which the mayor was ecstatic about.
Afterwards my husband and I took £50 of the proceeds along to the Mairie as a facility fee for use of the church, as we had commandeered the building all day and evening and had run quite high-powered lights off its power supply etc.  He protested hugely that it could be seen as a back-hander, and said how careful he had to be to be nothing but totally above board.  (Obviously it had not been our intention that this should go into the mayor's back pocket, but for the good of the community in some way.)
Eventually he decided that the money could be put into the church restoration fund, and the secretary had to issue us with a series of incredibly formal receipts.

A couple of years later, at the village gathering to celebrate the end of the church restoration work, this princely contribution earned us a special mention in the Mayor's speech, alongside the Conseil General (who, I dare say, contributed the lions' share...).

Talking of church restoration, it's funny how the community is not involved in any way in fund-raising for such work, isn't it?  In the UK, we'd no doubt have some huge painted thermometer fixed to the wall to show how the funds were growing...

Angela

[Clarkkent]

Mais non!   Separation of Church and State is about the most sensible thing to ever happen in France.

I fear You may have missed the point here, SB. I don't know how widespread this is in rural France, but in my commune all the church buildings seem to owned by the commune which maintains them and makes them available to the cure. The post above seems to describe a similar situation. Hardly separation.

[SaligoBay]

Indeed.   I seem to be missing a lot of points these days.   Must get out more.  Will delete above rubbish immediately.