2023-07-06 15:38:13
The socialist senator of Haute-Garonne, Claude Raynal, in the Senate, in Paris, August 1, 2022. JULIEN MUGUET FOR “THE WORLD”
After two months of work and a dozen hearings, the Senate commission of inquiry into the Marianne fund, this financial windfall launched in 2021 by Marlène Schiappa, then Minister Delegate for Citizenship, to finance associations responsible for carrying out a “against -republican speech ”on social networks, returned, Thursday, July 6, its work. Co-rapporteur of the commission, the socialist senator of Haute-Garonne and chairman of the finance commission, Claude Raynal, returns to the conclusions of this investigation.
The conclusions of the investigation report that you submit are rather severe, both for the administration and for Marlène Schiappa and her cabinet. For you, is there a political responsibility? A fault ?
First of all, I think the hearings showed how useful this mission was. Alongside the General Inspectorate of Administration, which looks at the administrative side of things, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office, which looks at the question of possible financial embezzlement, the commission of inquiry makes it possible to see whether or not there is political responsibility. And, at the end of this mission, we can say that yes, obviously, there is a responsibility, both on the minister concerned and on his cabinet. We can say, moreover, that it would have been better for her to assume some responsibility.
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We first have a political decision linked to a series of tragic events, of course, the assassination of a professor [Samuel Paty] in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines) in October 2020, in which social networks played a considerable role. This is where the idea of the Marianne fund comes from: we’re going to get associations to take a counter-speech to radical Islamism. There is a clear political will, both from the Minister and from the Secretary General of the Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Delinquency and Radicalization (CIPDR), Christian Gravel, known to be the bearer of this somewhat stiff speech, if I can say, on secularism or on how to fight radical Islamism. There were several ways to do it. The first, the simplest, was to work with associations that already existed. But, by choosing a call for tenders, there is the idea of making a response that is more about communication, a political coup, a strong display.
In your report, you qualify the USEPPM, the association of Mohamed Sifaoui, beneficiary of the largest subsidy, as the “flagship” of the Marianne fund. What do you mean by this expression?
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