2023-11-10 18:00:12
Anne Hidalgo can breathe a little, just a little bit. Friday, November 10, the ethics commission of the City of Paris gave its opinion on the trip of the socialist mayor of the capital which is so controversial. From October 16 to 22, she went to New Caledonia then to Tahiti, accompanied by five people, including her deputies for sports and overseas, to, in particular, deepen cultural relations with these overseas territories and visit the Teahupoo surf site in Tahiti, as part of the preparation for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. A beach that she ultimately did not set foot on. The visit was postponed by a day, too late for the councilor who had already taken his plane ticket to visit his daughter, during the following two weeks, privately this time, on the island of Ralatea , located 45 minutes from Tahiti.
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This official trip, made to the other side of the world – which cost 59,500 euros of public money –, combined with a private trip, has sparked lively debates for several days.
According to information from Mondethe “affair” was resolved fairly quickly by the nine members of an ethics commission chaired by Yves Charpenel, former first advocate general at the Court of Cassation, and set up by Ms. Hidalgo herself, in October 2022. Meeting on Wednesday, November 8, in plenary session, the commission, which exercises a control and recommendation role, found nothing wrong with the financial support for the trip.
Clumsiness
According to her, there were no public funds used for private purposes. No conflict of interest to note, therefore. There is nothing wrong with the mission order and the program, which is sufficiently dense, according to the commission, to justify the public funds spent on this occasion. “The public part of the trip made by Ms. Anne Hidalgo, in her capacity as mayor of Paris, (…) is directly linked to the interests of the City of Paris, both in terms of its objects and meetings with various authorities”writes the commission in a press release published in the afternoon of Friday, November 10, judging that the movements of the elected socialist – both public and private – “are ethically consistent”.
According to documents consulted by The worldthe reservation and payment of return tickets by Anne Hidalgo and Jean-Marc Germain, her husband, at the low cost company French Bee, date from July 14, 2023 – for an amount of 866.91 euros for the mayor’s return trip. That is four months before the departure of the delegation. Why have we freed ourselves from the rules of common law which authorizes the elected official not to pay for this return ticket herself, whatever the date, even if the trip is extended privately? Even the ethics commission was surprised by this personal payment. Especially since other members of the delegation, who also stayed there longer, did not pay for their return tickets themselves. A simple desire, on the part of the first magistrate of Paris, to do more and more in terms of probity, asks a member? For David Alphand, vice-president of the Les Républicains (LR) group at the Paris Council, “She gives the impression that she was already planning her vacation.” As for the Papeete-Ralatea return ticket, which allowed Ms. Hidalgo to join her daughter, it was also reserved and paid for by the Paris town hall on September 28.
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