France in Focus

My neighbour is a right nasty bit of work who refuses to clear his land which is full of rubbish and weeds, the latter nearly 2 metres high at the moment. This includes chardons (thistles) which are currently flowering and also sending seeds everywhere.
The mayor of the commune claims to have no powers to get the land cleared though I am doubtful.
Anybody got any ideas for getting the law enforced, svp?

Is there a law?

If your neighbour is the owner of his house and land, it is not easy to do something. If there would be an illegal dump of asbestos or other dangerous substances, the French law has certainly "public safety" clauses. From the French side of the internet this summary.

Is your neighbour also American Wooly, or English?

He is French, local shopkeeper; has bought land and property all over the area and always seems to allow them to fall into wrack and ruin according to villagers.
I English by birth but rootless by experience

Using RobertArthur's link - which talks of déchets (rubbish) - I suspect that nothing could / would be done unless one or more of the weeds was on the "dangerous" list, like japanese knotweed.

This has come up elsewhere, just wish I could remember where! As I have a client who has a derelict property adjoining her's, and the garden was in a terrible and overgrown state. Proprietors do have a legal responsibility to keep their "gardens" in an acceptable state, especially if they are in close proximity to others. What I also learned, is that it is illegal for someone to go into said garden and cut down any offending items without the owner's permission (oops - I won't do that again!) Here's what I can find at the moment:
https://www.arlogis.com/faire-construir ... entations/

This particular paragraph is the most relevant:
"
L’obligation d’entretien
En tant que responsable et propriétaire de votre jardin, vous avez l’obligation d’en assurer son entretien. Un jardin non entretenu peut causer bien des désagréments pour le voisinage (odeurs, animaux nuisibles, mauvaises herbes…). Afin d’éviter tout dépassement de votre végétation chez les voisins, il faudra tailler régulièrement les plantations en bordure de votre terrain. En effet, sachez que les voisins ne sont pas en droit de couper eux même les éventuelles branches qui arriveraient sur leur propriété. Néanmoins en cas de refus votre part, il pourrait faire appel à la justice pour vous y contraindre. "

Unfortunately, if your own Mairie is reluctant to help (because the person being complained about is basically a local commerçant), you may have your work cut out. But, you could go down the road of saying you consider the state of the neighbour's property a fire hazard?

Yes, I am gonna follow that lead tomorrow.

Thank you all for your contributions.

Fire hazard?
Do be careful with that fag end.

The problem could arise that when you set fire to the field the Maire may remember that the day before you mentioned it was a fire hazard.