“Emmanuel Macron’s duties naturally led him to interact with many companies. » The Elysee Palace did not wish to respond in detail to the revelations of the “Uber Files”, in particular on the proximity between Uber lobbyists and the president, when he was Minister of the Economy. But his comment takes up a recurring argument among the many politicians interviewed by The world on this file: there would be nothing unusual in meeting business leaders or lobbyists in the context of the files for which they are responsible.
In reality, the debate raised by this survey does not relate so much to the existence of exchanges between political leaders and private companies as to the almost total opacity with which they are covered. “The transparency of lobbying is a real challenge in terms of the traceability of public debatebelieves Jean-François Kerléo, jurist and member of the Observatory of Public Ethics. Citizens must be able to understand how the law is created, what are the stakes and the balance of power within power. »
“Uber Files”, an international investigation
“Uber Files” is an investigation based on thousands of internal Uber documents sent by an anonymous source to the British daily The Guardianand forwarded to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and 42 media partners, including The world.
Emails, presentations, meeting minutes… These 124,000 documents, dated from 2013 to 2017, offer a rare dive into the mysteries of a start-up which was then seeking to establish itself in cities around the world despite a regulatory context. unfavorable. They detail how Uber has used, in France as elsewhere, all the tricks of lobbying to try to change the law to its advantage.
The “Uber Files” also reveal how the Californian group, determined to impose itself by a fait accompli and, if necessary, by operating illegally, has implemented practices deliberately playing with the limits of the law, or which may amount to judicial obstruction of the investigations of which he was the subject.
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From this point of view, the “Uber Files” are dizzying. From outside the government, no one in France could imagine that Emmanuel Macron and his teams had had such a close relationship with Uber, with at least forty exchanges between 2014 and 2016. It’s much more, for example , than the Ministry of Transport, which in theory had the supervision of the sector of transport vehicles with driver (VTC).
“Make things transparent”
Rather than prohibit these contacts, “we have to make sure that things are transparent”, believes Sophie de Cacqueray, lecturer in public law at Aix-Marseille University. In some countries, such as the United States, public officials are required to declare their meetings with interest representatives. Not in France, where ministers and parliamentarians have no such constraints.
Progress has nevertheless been made in recent years, with the creation of the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP), which since 2014 has been monitoring any conflicts of interest of parliamentarians and ministers. The Sapin 2 law, passed at the end of 2016, also established a register of interest representatives, in which lobbyists must declare their clients and their activities.
However, there are still many loopholes in the law. The content of lobbyists’ declarations is incomplete and imprecise: they note in the register their contacts with ” a minister “, ” a deputy “, without having to give names or dates. The meetings of Uber representatives with the Minister of the Economy Emmanuel Macron would therefore not be recorded there. “We have the merit of having a tool, but it deserves a new phase”believes Jean-François Kerléo.
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