The nights of Vaugneray (Rhône), a rural town located west of Lyon, have never been so lively. Every Monday and Wednesday evening, you go there with your duvet, your insulated bottle and your duly completed application for identity papers. Because we know, in the Rhône, and well beyond now, that the town hall of Vaugneray accepts without appointment, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, twenty-five applications for passports or national identity cards. This rare commodity does not only attract the Lyon basin: in recent weeks, the mayor has listed Toulonnais, Parisians and Angevins.
“You have to be motivated! »notes the city councilor, Daniel Jullien (without label), since the applicants will have to cover a thousand kilometers again, two weeks later, to recover their title. “They arrive earlier and earlier: this morning [mardi 12 avril], at 1:30 a.m. they were already full”says the retired farmer, who no longer knows whether to congratulate himself or lament the sudden popularity of Vaugneray.
If its municipality and its agents do the honor of public service, they find themselves overwhelmed by the success of this initiative relayed first under the coat, then by the local press, and lately by the national press. “It is not normal that we are the only ones in this situation, and one day we will have to ask ourselves the question of stopping, deplores Mr. Jullien, noting that a few years ago many town halls around accepted requests without an appointment. But it is also not normal that, in a country like ours, one cannot obtain an identity document in less than five months. »
Vaugneray’s success can be explained by the particularly long delays in issuing identity cards, in many places in France, since the beginning of the year.
In Paris, Tuesday, not an appointment in the next nine weeks. In Cavalaire-sur-Mer (Var), there is room in June, but in Cholet (Maine-et-Loire), it will be necessary to wait until September. The big cities are the most overwhelmed, but rural communities are now under attack from anxious city dwellers as their holidays abroad approach. The local press is overflowing with stories of Parisians on an adventure in the Oise, of Nice in the Vaucluse or of Lyonnais visiting the Jura.
Only 2,390 authorized municipalities
At the start of the year, the supply and demand for identity documents do not meet, for two reasons: since 2017, only town halls with a fingerprint collection system can issue identity cards , and there are only 2,390 in France; and, in 2022, many French people are looking to redo their papers, after two years of pandemic, during which they were little used: 1.2 million requests in March, twice as many as in 2021 at the same time.
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