French Town Banned Mosquitoes. The Mosquitoes Did Not Comply.

In July 2018, the small town of Briollay, Maine-et-Loire, did what no town had dared: it made mosquitoes illegal.

Mayor André Marchand signed an official municipal decree banning the insects from his village. The move followed a flood of complaints from residents, who had endured a brutal mosquito season after spring flooding turned the area into ideal breeding ground. The decree was, by the mayor's own admission, largely a joke — a theatrical way to show his constituents that their grievances had been heard at the highest possible local level.

But the paperwork was real. It was a genuine municipal decree, typed up and issued through the proper channels of a French mairie, against an enemy with no address, no legal counsel, and no capacity to read.

Predictably, the mosquitoes ignored it. There is no evidence the ban reduced a single bite, though the local press at the time noted the decree's chief enforcement problem: mosquitoes are, by nature, notorious rule-breakers.

Marchand did not stop at legislation. On the practical side, he bought anti-mosquito traps and had them installed around the town hall, the nursery, and the primary schools — the part of his anti-mosquito policy that actually required the insects' cooperation to work.

The story has endured as a minor classic of French municipal absurdism, still cited in roundups of the strangest decrees ever issued by French mayors — alongside bans on falling ill, on dying on weekends, and on UFOs landing in vineyards. France takes local government seriously. Its mosquitoes, less so.

The underlying reporting is filed in the Evidence Locker: Complete France (2022); The Local France (Apr 2026).