Entre Nous: Countdown for unnamed roads in France
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00:00Well, for many of you who've gone for a drive or a walk in the French countryside,
00:04getting lost on a road or a path with no name is actually pretty common.
00:09But the French government is now trying to get smaller towns to change that and give
00:13those places a name.
00:15We're going to talk more about this with Solange Mougin, who joins me in the studio.
00:18Hi, Solange.
00:19Hi, Jenny.
00:20So, giving a name to these places or these roads is a little more complicated than it
00:23seems, and it also seems that there's a deadline that's approaching to establish these addresses.
00:28Yeah, there are just two days left for small French towns that have less than 2,000 residents
00:33— and there are 35,000 of them — for them to make sure that they have names on all their
00:37roads, homes, and places in their village.
00:41They all have a specific address.
00:42Now, this move is part of a law called the 3D legislation, and it was passed in 2022.
00:48It's named the 3D because of the — so it's called the Differentiation, Decentralization,
00:55and Deconcentration and Simplification Law.
00:58And its goal is essentially to simplify the work of town halls across France.
01:02But one element of this law — the giving of addresses and road names to hundreds of
01:07thousands of places — well, it's proving to be a huge undertaking.
01:11Bigger towns had until January 1st, and now these smaller towns have until Saturday, June
01:161st, to abide by the law.
01:19Before the law, there were more than 350,000 roads and routes in France that did not have
01:24an official name.
01:25Just 15% of small towns had done this for all addresses.
01:29Now, today, the changes concern nearly two million French people who will now have a
01:34new or a different address.
01:36For example, in the town of Macaulays in central France, there are less than 600 residents,
01:42but there are hundreds of names that needed to be given.
01:47We're establishing between 400 and 450 addresses in the town of Macaulays, which is a lot.
01:54So it would be surprising if there aren't ones we forget, make mistakes on, or double
01:59up.
02:00Things like that.
02:01César Lange, why does the government want these places in France to have specific addresses?
02:06And what will happen if they don't?
02:08Well, luckily and hopefully, nothing will happen for now for these town halls, as there
02:13are some 200,000 roads that haven't been named yet.
02:17Just over half of these towns have done so, but the other half have not.
02:21There are no fines currently if the town does not name every route.
02:26But that said, once the law goes into effect June 1st, if the municipality hasn't done
02:31it, then it could be liable for damages if the lack of an address causes, for example,
02:36firefighters or ambulances to lose their way and not to get to a fire or an ill person
02:41because they got lost.
02:42So small towns, but also cities before them, while they've been working for years to name
02:46or some of them have been working for years to name everything.
02:49In some places, like in the southwest town, city of Sala, the city asked locals what they
02:54wanted for their unnamed streets.
02:59On social media, the name that came out on top was Simon Veil, Simon de Beauvoir and
03:03Josephine Baker, but also more original names like Truffle Street or Foie Gras Road, because
03:08we're in the capital of gastronomy.
03:10The added value is clear in regard to tourism, to use GPS location tracking.
03:14It's also the case for first responders.
03:16You have to think about how it will be easier for them to find out where they need to be.
03:20And finally, it will help mail services with letters and packages.
03:25As we just heard, there are many reasons to create established road names and addresses.
03:30Many homes are actually given large numbers of their addresses.
03:33And this actually refers to the meters from the start of the road.
03:37This is for future urbanization and also to help first responders know the distance.
03:42So there is this safety aspect.
03:45There's also high speed internet cables.
03:47They require specific address tags.
03:49GPS systems also use them as do postal and delivery personnel.
03:54All right.
03:55So there's a lot of arguments as to why these address changes and these new names are a
03:58good thing.
03:59But the law has still created quite a bit of an uproar.
04:01Well, there's the question of what to name these roads and paths.
04:07Sometimes it works out well in a sort of collegial manner with towns picking specific
04:13names either that already existed by word of mouth or are in the history of the place
04:18or are picking new ones that have a specific local significance.
04:23Those choices have solidified the history of these places.
04:28People like narratives, not lies, stories.
04:30It can help younger generations who feel lost to understand their history.
04:35As we say in the north, in Ch'ti, if you don't know where you come from, you can't
04:38know where to go.
04:41However, as Jeanne was referring to it, there has been a lot of pushback as well because
04:47sometimes the changes have not taken into account regional specificities and regional
04:52languages or the choices have actually been outsourced because doing the research and
04:58naming things, well, it costs money and time.
05:01Many hamlets or lieu d'as we call them in French, well, they've been called by a specific
05:05name for hundreds of years and then they were suddenly changed into something else entirely.
05:10In Alsace, where there's a strong regional sentiment, there's been pushback about naming
05:14streets in French versus Alsatian.
05:17In Brittany also, an association has even called on UNESCO to help save these lieu d'as
05:22or these hamlet names, which they argue have been given names in French and not in the
05:26traditional Breton.
05:28So there are many people in French villages who fear that these changes and the standardization,
05:32well, that it's chipping away from their local history and their regional specificities.
05:37All right, Solange, that's fascinating stuff.
05:39Thank you so much for that look at that new law that's going to make addresses necessary
05:45here in France.
05:46Thank you very much.
05:47Thanks to Solange and thanks to you for watching Don't Go Away.
05:49I'll be back at the top of the hour with more headlines.