Lucien Berre, the eighth deputy mayor of Bouguenais responsible for urban planning and housing relations, was definitively expelled from the municipal majority on September 24, after two-thirds of local councillors voted by secret ballot following revelations that his Facebook page heavily promoted far-right political figures including Marion Maréchal and Éric Zemmour.
Digital Traces and the Unraveling of a Municipal Alliance
The political fracture in Bouguenais began to unfold on Wednesday, September 23, when local reporting from Ouest-France brought public attention to the digital footprint of Lucien Berre. Prior to closing his Facebook profile that same day, the eighth deputy mayor had systematically shared the political positions and content of prominent French far-right figures, including Sarah Knafo and Gilbert Collard.
Mayor Sandra Impériale, a member of Les Républicains, stated that she had no prior knowledge of Berre’s online activity until media outlets flagged the posts. Moving swiftly to distance her administration from the controversy, Impériale called an emergency municipal team meeting for the evening of Thursday, September 24. Councillors faced a binary choice regarding Berre’s political future: a temporary suspension or outright exclusion from the governing group.
When the votes were tallied, roughly two-thirds of the councillors opted for permanent expulsion. “Lucien Berre is therefore no longer a member of the majority group. It is up to him to decide whether or not to resign from the municipal council,” Mayor Impériale summarized following the ballot.
Fallout and Dissension Within the Local Government
The handling of the disciplinary process immediately fractured the remaining alignment within the municipal team. Fayçal Chebourou, a municipal councillor from Sandra Impériale’s group, announced his resignation from the team to sit as an independent councillor. Chebourou refused to attend the Thursday evening meeting, publicly denouncing the reliance on a secret ballot—which he derisively compared to the reality television show Koh-Lanta—and expressing outrage that a mere temporary suspension had even been considered by leadership.
Opposition figures from the “divers gauche” spectrum, issued a sharp joint statement condemning Berre’s online publications. Highlighting his extensive administrative reach as both a municipal councillor since the previous mandate and the delegated deputy for urban planning and housing relations, the opposition stressed that elected officials cannot normalize extremist ideologies.
“Racism, the rejection of equality between citizens and the banalization of far-right ideas cannot be considered as simple opinions among others, when they concern an elected official of the Republic,” the opposition group stated.
Institutional Disbelief and Municipal Friction
Internal friction extended beyond elected officials to municipal labor representation. The CGT branch for territorial workers in Bouguenais voiced open skepticism regarding Mayor Impériale’s professed ignorance of Berre’s digital activity. In a public statement, the union questioned whether it was truly plausible that nobody within the municipal apparatus had previously noticed an executive-level official openly broadcasting far-right positions across public social channels.
As Berre weighs his next steps regarding his seat on the council, the fallout from the secret ballot and the ensuing departure of independent councillors signal lasting political turbulence for the Bouguenais majority six months into the current municipal term.
