The Finance Minister Michel Sapin, this Wednesday morning by the Cabinet its law against corruption in political and social context heckled. One year before the presidential election, overview of major issues the government.
Your law against corruption she will allow to meet the OECD in late 2014, considered that ‘on the matter the situation in France was “worrying”?
in the last twenty years, France has done much to eradicate corruption of elected officials, companies or officials. Let us remember all the way since the 1993 law, which I then had the responsibility. This has borne fruit. France is not a corrupt country and nobody considers it as such. Where we have bad grades, it is on acts of corruption committed by our companies abroad for markets. We must admit that we do not pursue them, do not condemn, unlike in the United States. The fault lies in our ineffective legal arsenal. For France, it is insulting to be shown at this point of the finger. It was time to react.
Several French companies, including BNP, Alstom and Total, were convicted in the United States, not France. A form of loss of sovereignty?
That’s my feeling. I find abnormal and damaging either the courts of other countries who condemn French companies for acts of corruption abroad. There is something shocking. One objective of this law is that in the matter, we found our sovereignty. We need to prosecute and convict companies convicted of corruption quickly enough that others do not do it for us.
How do you change that?
The first thing is prevention. The law thus transform the central department of prevention of corruption in an agency whose primary task will be to ensure that all companies with more than 500 employees and whose annual turnover exceeds EUR 100 million put in place procedures to prevent the risk of corruption, such as the training of their employees. The agency will monitor the implementation of these plans and will punish failures. The second thing is the strengthening of repression. To prevent recidivism, the judge can condemn a company to implement a compliance program in its procedures with the legislation on the prevention of corruption, under the control of the agency that can appeal to an expert … The United States are already practicing this “monitoring”.
it is also necessary that companies are doomed! What will your law does enhance the efficiency of justice?
Our real problem is the slowness. French justice can pursue and investigate but under conditions so difficult that the US authorities systematically above. When we complain, Americans say they penalize our companies because we do not fast enough! This is no longer tolerable. To facilitate procedures, the text including addresses issues of extraterritoriality by enabling justice to prosecute for bribery of foreign nationality of natural persons usually resident in France for acts of corruption committed abroad. The bill also creates an offense of a foreign public official in influence. Finally, it facilitates the prosecution of acts of corruption of foreign public officials by allowing organizations like Transparency International Anticor or to file a complaint with civil party.
However, following the negative opinion of the State Council, one of the key provisions of the plea agreement, known as the “plead guilty” has been removed …
the idea was to allow a company suspected of corruption of from prosecution in exchange for a fine and of the obligation to comply with the requirements of the agency for fight against corruption. The State Council has made to the remarks, not legal, but opportunity, which it was legitimate to take into account. Nevertheless, the idea is good, and we must continue to dig. I think we are not at the end of the story. Parliamentarians may wish to reintroduce a device that, abroad, proved its effectiveness. We will see the amendments.
Your law is also concerned with better protection for whistleblowers …
Yes. To protect his identity, a whistleblower can go find the agency that, once the facts checked herself seize justice. This can prevent an employee to suffer reprisals from his employer. However, on several points, the text is improved. Over the years, Parliament has created almost as much of whistleblower statutes that there were grounds alert! There is therefore a form of disorder which Parliament can remedy.
Edward Snowden should be protected by France …
It’s more complicated. There is a necessary protection of state secrets. The law only deals with whistleblowers in the sense that it is usually understood, those who report tax fraud complicity of large banks, or the attitude of some pharmaceutical companies.
It is the eve of a demonstration against the El Khomri law. With this text, Hollande marks a break, it gives the impression to bypass social dialogue …
It’s unfair to say that. Nine-tenths of the proposed measures were the subject of a wide consultation. Only two or three measures redundancies or the scale of industrial tribunals allowances have been a posteriori consultation. But it occurred. The President wished and considered. The idea that one can reform through above everyone and the more you hurt, the more profound reform, is a misconception. The reform in the break, it does not exist. The dialogue is the opposite of forced passage.
With the prospect of a Brexit, the refugee crisis, the rise of populism, Europe is she in danger?
The European ideal is in great danger. But this is not the Brexit as such that puts in danger. It is we, the French, to show what changes needed to enable Europe to restore hope. It is for us to recreate this ideal.
However, in a book of interviews with Wolfgang Schäuble (1), your German counterpart, take note that the political context allows to consider a stimulus European integration …
Wolfgang Schäuble, we share the belief that monetary union is a success, must always be accompanied by a stronger economic union. So we have to move forward. But the one and the other, we do the finding, perhaps reluctantly, that the political situation in our countries does not consider in the coming months a breakthrough that would require a treaty change. So we need to go as far as possible in the integration, without any need to change the Treaties. However, I think that France and Germany should take an early initiative that traces a horizon beyond 2017, and that does not rule out eventually a change in European legislation.
Do not you think that the French first perceive the austerity of this European idea?
If we reduce the deficit, it is primarily for the French. The fact that we did better than expected in 2015, it gives us strength and credibility. The France controls its destiny because it keeps its objectives. And this is new. We set 3.3% deficit in 2016 and be below 3% next year. We will respect this trajectory. I do not see why we should go faster or slower. Our goals is both lower deficits, lower taxes and expenses, and fund new security spending, or social justice, such as the revaluation of index point servants frozen for five years.
do you give some air to local authorities who say they do not make ends meet?
There are a series of real issues with local authorities. That of RSA funding is one. That is why there are open discussions with departments. Or the financing of the 500 000 unemployed training plan with the regions. But beyond this dialogue, I see no reason to tell local authorities that there is more work to do.
A large part of the electorate of François Hollande taken aback, if not angry against his recent initiatives such as the deprivation of nationality or the law work …
France is still not out of the crisis of 2008. It is a crisis of long lived ever since 1945. And this gives French disillusioned. It is necessary that we manage to break this wall of skepticism left. Obviously, this will help us, these are the results, particularly in terms of unemployment. But the time has come for the President to put forward the ideals of the left in everything he has done since 2012. And the left has always need to confront what would be the right policy if exercised responsibilities.
do you believe in a possible re-election of François Hollande?
I was an altar boy but I’m not a believer! I think in this political context very bumpy, left and right, the story remains to be written. Hollande is clearly the best candidate for the left.
(1) “Never without Europe!”, Ed. Public Debates.
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