2023-07-20 13:30:00
CASE – Did Emmanuel Macron spend a “hidden deal” with Uber to develop its activities in France? The parliamentary commission of inquiry into the “Uber Files” published its conclusions on Tuesday, July 18, 2023. The President of the Republic had “an opaque but privileged relationship” with Uber when he was Minister of the Economy. The report, launched by the La France Insoumise (LFI) group, accuses the head of state of having favored the development of the Californian company in France, in exchange for stopping the UberPop service, declared, however, “illegal” by justice. The text also mentions the financing of Macron’s presidential campaign in return for this “hidden deal”affirming that sa “proximity to Uber executives” continued after his election. Conclusions rejected by Benjamin Haddad, Renaissance deputy and chairman of the commission of inquiry.
The Uber Files are a vast leak of documents that occurred during the summer of 2022. More than 120,000 documents were provided by Mark MacGann, former lobbyist at the American platform, to the International Consortium of Journalists. The data was analyzed by the British daily The Guardian, with FranceInfo et The world. These leaks demonstrate how Uber would have circumvented French legislation to develop its activity, calling into question the role of Emmanuel Macron.
After “6 months of work”120 people heard, 67 auditioned and 85 hours of exchanges, carried out with, among others, former ministers such as Manuel Valls and Bernard Cazeneuve, the parliamentary commission of inquiry, launched in February by La France Insoumise, whose deputy Danielle Simonnet is the rapporteur, published its 600-page report on Tuesday.
“I will watch this personally”
Uber is accused in this one of having “imposed, in defiance of legality, a state of affairs on the rule of law, by violating the rules of the private transport of people, by adopting a strategy of aggressive tax evasion and optimization, by resorting to undeclared work, by escaping the payment of social security contributions and by knowingly evading the controls of the authorities”. To all this would be added “aggressive lobbying consisting in penetrating the heart of the French elites”by deploying “all over the place” various means such as “very influential investors”of the “public affairs specialists” and especially, “allies at the highest level of the state”.
The text evokes Emmanuel Macron, “in the forefront of these supports”, “who maintained extremely privileged ties” by “defending the interests of VTC platforms” (Transport Car with Driver, editor’s note). “The confidentiality and the intensity of the contacts between Uber, Mr. Emmanuel Macron and his cabinet testify to an opaque but privileged relationship”. The commission of inquiry denounces a “hidden deal” et “secretly negotiated with Uber”at the expense “orientations favored by the Government of the time”. The head of state “will have been a valuable support for Uber”.
what’s this “deal” ? Emmanuel Macron allowed, through a decree, “to lighten the training and examination conditions imposed on VTC drivers”, such as the number of hours of training required to become an Uber driver, which fell from 250 to 7 hours. The report, which reveals messages, text messages and emails exchanged between Uber executives with Macron (pages 89-95), claims that in exchange, Uber agreed to end its UberPop service. This allowed any driver or owner of a car to improvise as an Uber driver, without going through the mandatory training or having a license.
The service was however considered to be “illegal since the entry into force of the Thévenoud law” in 2014, which reserves passenger transport for taxis and VTCs. In this regard, the commission of inquiry reveals the exchange in 2015 between Mark MacGann and Macron in person, when the police chief of Bouches-du-Rhône, Laurent Nuñez banned the Uber X service in Marseille. The former lobbyist asked Macron’s cabinet to “understand what is happening”, to whom the host of the Élysée promised to “look at this personally”.
In addition to the “non-payment of dues” drivers, the “circumvention of tax and labor laws”The report denounces “deliberate will” d’Uber “to escape the controls carried out by the public authorities”, using a device that allows the American company to delete data from its computers in the event of a police intervention. “This technique consists in ‘cutting off the access of the computers of one of its subsidiaries to the files and internal systems of the group in order to prevent the authorities from recovering the data which interest them in order to advance their investigations’”lit-on (p. 38).
“No secret deal, no conflict of interest, no counterparties”, according to Renaissance
Other consideration of “deal” according to LFI deputies: the financing of Emmanuel Macron’s first presidential campaign. Mark MacGann acknowledged during his hearing that “donating money and participating in fundraising” for the benefit of the current President of the Republic. The latter even invited the general manager of Uber in France, Thibaud Simphal, “to ask him if he wanted to participate in the financing of his campaign” (p.99). A request accepted by Mr. Simphal. This “close relationship” continued after Macron’s election, since “34 direct exchanges would have taken place between 2018 and 2022, while 83 similar exchanges would have taken place between the Ministry of Transport and Uber”.
Among 47 proposals, including “12 priorities”include the establishment “a presumption of employment for platform workers”thanks to which the drivers “would be considered as employees having an ’employment relationship’” with their employer and not as freelancers, paving the way for “many social rights.”
The report’s findings were dismissed by the chairman of the inquiry committee, Renaissance MP Benjamin Haddad: “There was no compromise, no secret ‘deal’, no conflict of interest, no quid pro quo, contrary to what our rapporteur tries to demonstrate in vain in her report” (p. 296). He also defended the attitude of the public authorities towards Uber’s lobbying: “Faced like all the other major economies with the arrival of these new economic players, public decision-makers have provided progressive legislative responses adapted to the objectives of increasing supply in the T3P sector (public and private passenger transport, editor’s note) and easing conflicts, far removed from Uber’s claims”.
Benjamin Haddad thus accused the rapporteur Danielle Simonnet of “politicize your report”by excluding from its text the work of the commission on the “fate of platform workers”, “the reality of working conditions that are still often unworthy” for the benefit of “opaque logics of influence”.
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