2023-07-06 18:00:12
The former Minister Delegate for Citizenship, current Secretary of State for the Social and Solidarity Economy and Community Life, Marlène Schiappa, in Paris, May 26, 2023. ALAIN JOCARD / AFP
The title of the report delivered by the senatorial commission sets the tone: “The Marianne fund, the drift of a political coup”. Unsurprisingly, the commission of inquiry, chaired by Senator Jean-François Husson (Les Républicains, Meurthe-et-Moselle) and co-chaired by the chairman of the finance commission, Claude Raynal (Socialist Party, Haute-Garonne), has issued harsh conclusions after eight weeks of hearing the main actors in this political soap opera, also the subject of an investigation by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office.
The summary of the report, which The world was able to consult, reviews the context of the creation of this fund, following the terrorist assassination of Professor Samuel Paty, in October 2020. It was a question of financing a “action on the networks to thwart the deployment of a separatist and violent discourse”. But, the report insists, this fund is above all a “communication operation”, announced with great fanfare on television by Marlène Schiappa, then Minister for Citizenship. An operation that largely explains the” emergency “ in the drafting of specifications.
The report also reproduces an extract from the initial drafting of this notebook, then that corrected by Marlène Schiappa’s office, from which all the objectives around “the fight against prejudices and stereotypes”for the benefit of the only “response to separatist propaganda”. A view that “is that of a combat secularism”notes the report, which also criticizes the request, still at the initiative of Mrs. Schiappa’s cabinet, to shorten the deadline for the call for projects.
“Sloppy selection process”
The selection of associations was made according to “a sloppy, opaque and fragmented selection process”imprinted “amateurism”continues the Senate report, which notes that “only 1.4 million euros” of the 2.5 million in the fund “has really been dedicated to projects that have not been subject to prior arbitration”. “The cabinet and the minister herself have overstepped their role”, continues the report. Mainly because, in their eyes, the Union of Physical Education and Military Preparation Societies, the association used by the essayist Mohamed Sifaoui to apply for the fund, was the real ” flagship “, which captured most of the financial windfall. The senators recall the many meetings between the minister’s office and between Mr. Sifaoui, “actively encouraged” to submit their project.
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