Belgian town dumps French twin over Front National mayor
The mayor of a Belgian town cut off ties with its twin town in southern France on Monday, after voters in Beaucare elected a Front National mayor in weekend elections.
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The anti-immigration anti-EU National Front will take control of Beaucaire, a sun-soaked bullfighting town, where FN party official Julien Sanchez is to become the next mayor.
"Politically, we cannot continue to work with people who develop such views, such ideologies," Hughes Bayet, the Socialist mayor of the Belgian town of Farciennes, which is twinned with Beaucaire, told Belgium’s RTBF station.
The twinning between the two towns goes back to World War II when Farciennes residents fled the Nazi invasion of Belgium for southern France, but Bayet said the ties were now suspended.
France's ruling Socialists suffered a humiliating defeat on Sunday as the UMP won more than a hundred and fifty municipalities and the FN made historic gains, winning control of about a dozen French towns.
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