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Municipal elections were held in France on 11 and 18 March 2001. These elections were marked by a setback for the left and a victory for the right one year before the2002 presidential election. However, the capital,Paris and the second largest city,Lyon both switched to the left.

Following the second round, the right controlled 318 municipalities, the left 259.

The next elections were scheduled for 2007 but were rescheduled to 2008 to avoid interfering with the legislative and presidential elections of 2007.

The number of cities of over 30,000 inhabitants held by the communists shrank from 37 to 27 following the 2001 municipal elections.^[1] After the loss ofLe Havre after thepreceding municipal elections, theCommunist Party lost the cities it managed to reconquer in 1995 (La Ciotat,Sète,Nîmes) like some of its former bastions (Drancy,Argenteuil,Dieppe,Montluçon).

The gain ofSevran andArles (from the Socialist Party) were not enough to reverse the progressive collapse of "municipal Communism", a tendency already started since the 1983 election (with the loss ofNîmes,Sète,Reims,Levallois-Perret,Antony, orSèvres) and confirmed in 1989 with the loss ofAmiens.

TheFrench Socialist Party lost in total 8 cities of more than thirty thousand inhabitants, with several party personalities undergoing defeat in their respective towns.^[1]Catherine Trautmann, Minister of Culture, is not re-elected inStrasbourg, likeJack Lang inBlois. InAvignon,Élisabeth Guigou fails to unseat the RPR incumbent, Marie-Josée Roig.Martine Aubry becomes mayor ofLille only with 49.6% of the votes (and with a 53% abstention) in this city historically solid for the Socialists. Their victories in several cities such asAjaccio,Auxerre (helped by the presence of two right-wing candidates in the second round),Dijon, orSalon-de-Provence, or in the major cities of Paris andLyon, do not counterbalance the party's loses.

The Greens wonSaumur, their first city of over 30,000 inhabitants, with over 50% of the votes in the first round.^[1] The Greens began to emerge as the second most important party in the "plural left" after the Socialist Party, to the disadvantage of the Communists. In cities where they ran against socialist and communist lists, the Greens scored remarkable successes, such as in Grenoble (20%), Lille (15,5%),Besançon (16,1%), and in some Parisianarrondissements where they scored close to 20% in the first round of voting.^[2]

The support of the PS by the Greens in the second round contributed to the victory of the left in Paris and Lyon.

Workers' Struggle ran 128 lists in 109 different cities, which won 4.37% of the votes, or 120,347 votes. LO obtained 33 councillors including 11 women, in 22 different cities, without amalgamating its lists with those of the plural left in the second round.

Revolutionary Communist League ran or "supported" (according to their terms) 91 lists, common with various coalition partners. It obtained 4.52%, or 93,182 votes. By the first round, these lists obtained 26 elected officials. Several lists then amalgamated with lists of the plural left, including of the MDC.

Despite the losses in Lyon and Paris, the parliamentary right made important gains: it gained forty municipalities of more than 15,000 inhabitants in addition to those it already controlled, and gains from the left several towns of 30,000 inhabitants, including:

• Strasbourg: victory of the list of Fabienne Keller (UDF) (with 50.85% of the votes) with overCatherine Trautmann, incumbent
• Rouen:Pierre Albertini (UDF) won with 51.25% of the voices, against the outgoing mayor Yvon Robert (who won in 1995).
• Aix-en-Provence: Maryse Joissains-Masini (DVD) won with 50.60% of the voices against 49.40% for Jean-François Picheral (PS), mayor since 1989
• Nîmes: the Communist mayor Alain Clary (elected in 1995 in a four-way runoff) obtained only 44.33% of the votes, which elected Jean-Paul Fournier (RPR) with 55.66% of the voices).
• Quimper: Alain Gerard (RPR) won the city (with 52.13% of the votes), from the Socialist Jean-Claude Joseph (47.87%) after the socialist incumbent decided not to run for re-election.^[3]
• Blois: Nicolas Perruchot (UDF) defeated the Minister for National EducationJack Lang by 37 votes(45.31% of the votes against 45.09%) in spite of the presence of the candidate of the FN.

The right held to the cities ofToulouse,Marseille, andNice, with the victory of the lists led byPhilippe Douste-Blazy in the first (55% of the votes), byJean-Claude Gaudin in the second (48.5% of the votes) and byJacques Peyrat in the third (44.48% of the votes).

In 1995, the candidates of the FN had carried the towns ofToulon,Marignane,Orange and laterVitrolles in 1997. In 2001, Jean-Marie Le Chevallier, mayor ofToulon (MNR, ex-FN) was beaten by the first round, obtaining only 7.78% of the votes. The mayor of Orange, Jacques Bompard (FN, nowMPF) was re-elected by the first round and the mayor ofMarignane, Daniel Simonpieri (MNR), by the second round with 62.52% of the votes, against 37.48% for Guy Martin (DL). InVitrolles,Catherine Mégret (MNR) was initially re-elected with 45.32% of the voices against 44.07% for Domenica Tichadou (PS) but her election was invalidated afterwards. She was finally defeated by Guy Obino (PS) in 2002.

The strong presence of both MNR and FN lists in numerous cities caused the failure of many far-right candidates to reach the runoff, as many FN candidates had done in 1995.

• Municipal elections in France
• 2001 elections in France
• March 2001 in France

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