“A few days after the presentation of the pension reform, I wanted to speak to you directly to present the measures that concern you. This is how the message sent Thursday to at least 2.5 million agents and former state civil servants by their minister, Stanislas Guerini, begins. The Cnil has launched an investigation to determine whether this mailing meets the rules in use.
This email, which Le Parisien was able to consult, comes down to a few lines and invites the recipient to watch a video of Minister Stanislas Guerini. Of 6 minutes 30, this one has the ambition to “detail the measures that we take for” the agents of the public service, as explained in the introduction Stanislas Guerini. And the Minister of Public Service to evoke a “collective effort” with the decline in the retirement age and to explain the need to have to carry out this reform in the face of a “deficit” system. “We preserve the specificities of your pension plan”, he also assures.
“As if the reform had already been adopted”
In addition to this video, the email also leads to a PDF presentation corresponding to “additional details on all the support systems for extending careers”. This presents the pension reform project, without once mentioning the legislative timetable and the obligation of a vote in Parliament, describes the differences in the system between “today” and “tomorrow” and favors the future conditional.
Did this email have its place in the mailbox of public officials? “Stanislas Guerini speaks directly to the agents and explains the reform as if it had already been adopted as it is in Parliament”, denounced to AFP Céline Verzeletti, co-secretary general of the federal union of trade unions of the CGT state. Contacted by Le Parisien, the minister’s office refutes. “He is the employer of these agents and the message is to tell them how the reform project can affect them, a few days after its official presentation,” he explains.
A database used for payroll
Another question: how was the ministry able to send this email to all civil servants? According to Stanislas Guerini’s office, there were in fact two mailings: a first to the directorates of each ministry so that they could transmit to their agents, then a second to all agents and former agents of the State civil service, Thursday, “to make sure everyone got it”. It is this last shipment, which seems to have finally arrived at its destination, which is controversial less than a week before the next mobilization against the reform.
On the method, the Ministry of the Public Service ensures that it has gone through the Directorate General of Public Finances and the functionalities of the Secure Digital Space of the Public Agent (Ensap), where any agent who has passed through or is still in the public service of State can receive information on his remuneration and his retirement pension. Through this intermediary, it was possible to send this e-mail to the e-mail address which was entered there, both personal and professional. “In no case was there a file transmitted”, assures the Parisian the ministry. And the minister’s office to argue that the same system had been used during the Covid-19 to communicate with the agents.
Seized on numerous occasions, the National Commission for Computing and Liberties (Cnil) announced this Friday that it “will check whether the sending of the message has respected the general principles of protection of personal data” and “if the sending the message was consistent with the purposes of the file that was used”, in this case whether the Minister’s information was in fact a matter for human resources or for politics.