His career change is under scrutiny. The High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP) has expressed a number of reservations regarding the retraining of the former Minister of Agriculture, Julien Denormandie, who will join a start-up and create his own consulting company .
“A very particular caution must therefore be observed by Mr. Denormandie in the choice of his clients or the companies in which he would take a stake, in particular if the latter belong to the sectors of the city, housing, agriculture or the food, “she said in a decision of August 30, made public on Monday.
The former minister, who held three government positions related to these themes during Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term, wishes to “create a company in order to deliver consulting services and take equity stakes in other companies” , announces the HATVP. Julien Denormandie was also recently appointed “director of impact” of the start-up Sweep, which helps companies such as Saint-Gobain and JCDecaux to measure and reduce their carbon emissions.
Denormandie invited to rely on the HATVP
Regarding his consulting company, the risk of illegal taking of interests “cannot be excluded”, points out the High Authority. It asks him to refrain, among other things, from taking any stake in a company which he was responsible for ensuring the control, monitoring, or with which he had entered into a contract as part of his duties for the previous three years.
The former minister is also invited to seize this independent administrative authority “before taking on an organization as a client or taking a stake in a company” in connection with housing or agriculture in the next three years. The HATVP raises, on the other hand, an “ethical risk” if his company “performed services on behalf of the administrations over which he had authority or at his disposal”.
In addition, “it cannot be excluded that Mr. Denormandie takes steps (…) with officials and public officials with whom he worked during the exercise of his governmental functions”, she adds. He is therefore asked to refrain from “performing any service” on behalf of his former services for three years and to take steps with members of the government who were in office at the same time as him, as well as members of his former cabinets.
A close collaborator of Emmanuel Macron since his first electoral campaign, Julien Denormandie, 42, left the government in May 2022.