France. Since September 1, no municipality, mayor or outgoing elected official has escaped the pre-electoral rules in terms of community communication and campaign financing. The Ministry of the Interior and the National Commission for Campaign Accounts and Political Financing always publish their respective guides in advance so that everyone can read them. If this year, the delay in their publication (which should have taken place before September 1) gave rise to complaints from certain communities, most of them sent their employees a circular in June informing them of the communication rules to be adopted from September 1 “in order to allow them to anticipate the reserve period”, shighlights the City of Nice. The legal services of certain cities such as Montpellier even organized internal seminars well before the summer, and for the first time; municipalities, which do not have lawyers, have sometimes sought advice from lawyers specializing in public law. Because caution in matters of communication and campaign financing is essential given the sanctions incurred for non-compliance with the rules ranging from fines to cancellation of the vote and ineligibility. Article L.52-1 of January 15, 1990 of the Electoral Code stipulates: “During the six months preceding the first day of the month of an election and until the date of the voting round, when this is acquired, the use for electoral propaganda purposes of any commercial advertising process through the press or by any means of audiovisual communication is prohibited” And “no advertising promotion campaign for the achievements or management of a community can be organized in the territory of the communities interested in the election”.
“This provision aims to limit the advantage of being in office and the temptation to use municipal resources to campaign, and thus to guarantee equality between the different candidates”explains Guillaume Glénard, associate lawyer at the Landot & Associés firm, professor of public law at the University of Artois. “During these six months, local authorities, including communities of communes or agglomerations, and their outgoing elected officials in the exercise of their functions cannot draw up a promotional assessment of the mandate and highlight the achievements or projects to come in the municipal or intercommunal bulletin or during the traditional greeting ceremony at the beginning of the year, for example”he specifies.
A constant law but enriched case law
“Since the last elections in 2020, the rules applicable in the pre-electoral period have changed little on a legal level. On the other hand, the case law on the subject has been enriched”notes the Association of Mayors of France (AMF) which recalls in its guide “the four main principles whose respect allows usual communication to be pursued legally”, and which are: neutrality, the most important criterion to respect; prior art aimed at ensuring that the communication action was not created specifically with a view to the elections; the regularity of communication and the identity of these different means which must not undergo modifications – compared to what is usually done.
In other words, paper or digital publications, public displays, ceremonies, exhibition inaugurations or new places must therefore be purely informative in their communication and their tone neutral. Any promotion of a mandate, an action or a controversial approach in a press release, a speech or a speech by a mayor or an outgoing elected official is prohibited. Changing the design of the bulletin or the municipal or intercommunal site, its scale in terms of number of pages or sections and/or adding the mayor’s photograph to its editorial if the latter was previously absent, or modifying it if it already accompanied it, may result in the cancellation of the election. Last July, the administrative court of Orléans canceled the by-elections of the commune of Le Chautay in Cher due, among other things, to the requalification of the municipal bulletin during the advertising promotion campaign. “ Which was likely to alter the sincerity of the vote”for the court. Also not recommended, under penalty of being sanctioned, are invitations to an inauguration or an event going from a hundred people to several thousand, inducing higher resources than those usually noted.
“But no text prohibits municipalities from continuing to organize events, receptions, debate meetings or greeting ceremonies or laying of the first stone nor from inaugurating exhibitions or equipment as long as they are part of a usual practice and correspond to the work schedule established during the previous mandate”specifies Benjamin Di Grazia, director of the Legal, Purchasing and Assemblies department of the City and Metropolis of Montpellier, a city which inaugurates, at the beginning of December, a new tram line and reopens the Popular Pavilion after renovation work with an exhibition by Raymond Depardon. No text also prohibits a municipality or a cultural establishment in the city from carrying out specific media coverage of an event, such as advertising or advertorial broadcast in a press organ, as long as the comments made do not amount to declarations and there is no mention of the role of the mayor or the outgoing municipal team, nor that the budget involves significant unusual expenses. Example : “A museum can advertise an exhibition during the pre-electoral period even if it would never have done one during the mandate, but subject to two reservations: on the one hand, this advertising must be simply informative, otherwise it must not be an opportunity to promote the management of the outgoing mayor; on the other hand, and even if it is informative, it must not correspond to a campaign theme of the outgoing municipality. And taking into account these two reservations, it is recommended that the mayor does not comment on this exhibition”mentions lawyer Guillaume Glénard.
The trivialities of social networks
“Generally speaking, mayors and elected officials have integrated these rules compared to the years 1990-2000”he notes. The proliferation of networks and their uses since 2020 has nevertheless disrupted usual modes of communication and requires municipalities in this pre-electoral period to be extra vigilant in their use. And this, on two levels. The first is content. “The provisions of article L.52-1 of the Electoral Code being applicable to Internet sites, it is preferable to delete, from the first day of the sixth month preceding the month during which general elections are held (…), any information having the character of a promotion of the community, even if this information was put online before this date”recommends the Association of Mayors of France.“This means cleaning up all promotional content broadcast before the 1st on the municipality’s website and social networks (Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, etc.).er September 2025, without any time limitation having been given. This represents a titanic task, all the more problematic since the communities were able, before the pre-electoral period, to take stock of the mandate by listing achievements.notes Benjamin Di Grazia. The second level of vigilance concerns the clear separation between the community’s accounts and those of the mayor or outgoing elected officials so as not to create confusion between the accounts relating to institutional communication and those of electoral propaganda. In Montpellier, Lyon, Lille, Deauville, Toulouse or Nice, the accounts of the city and those of the candidate are thus distinct, but the management of comments on social networks differs in the absence of instructions on this subject. In Nice, “they may be deleted if they are of an offensive or defamatory nature”specifies the City; in Deauville, “we don’t answer”underlines Mayor Philippe Augier who should run again. The municipalities of Toulouse, Lyon and Montpellier, on the other hand, have chosen to block comments, because they believe that maintaining them during this period of neutralization of communication requires removing compliments, but retaining criticism.
In fact, the rules relating to opposition are more flexible. In the municipal newspaper, where opposition groups have space for expression in accordance with the law in the form of an insert, they are thus maintained and the municipality cannot respond to their attacks. “There is a real paradox in the fact that elected officials are required to be reserved while during election periods, voters are more particularly interested in politics”underlines Pierre Esplugas-Labatut, deputy mayor of Toulouse in charge of museums, professor of public law at the Toulouse Law School and spokesperson for Jean-Luc Moudenc for the 2026 municipal campaign. “During the last municipal council, for example, we were questioned and criticized by the opposition for our mandate which I cannot value. Another example: Jean Dieuzaide’s son attacked us in mid-October on the city’s networks because we had not bought his father’s house or paid enough for his photo fund. I couldn’t respond on my personal Twitter account even though I had the urge. But nothing prevents us from answering questions from journalists,” underlines the elected official whose interview in La Dépêche du Midi of October 25 allowed him to respond to criticism, a month before the reopening after the work of the Château d’Eau, the City’s photo institution created by the photographer.
“The texts have become extremely rigid and faced with increasingly cautious case law on these issues, municipalities have a tendency to self-censor”deplores Pierre Esplugas-Labatut. “We have reached a peak in rigor and supervision of public life which poses a problem, underlines Philippe Augier for his part. IThere is a severity which has increased in the name of the principle of exemplarity for elected officials, who certainly must not be individuals above the law. But we have become a permanent control company, and no longer a stock company. »
