INTERVIEW
Will the soap opera of the François de Rugy affair make a positive change in the control of politicians' spending? If the former Minister of the Ecological Transition was largely cleared Tuesday by government and Assembly investigations of work in his company housing and sumptuous dinners, the Prime Minister has already announced that work in the housing of ministers would now be subject to approval. Invited Tuesday of Europe 1, the scientific director of the Public Ethics Observatory Jean-François Kerléo believes that it would go much further: the "rules are still much too vague," he laments.
These rules, Jean-François Kerléo calls to "codify them more, perhaps in the framework of a text that would codify the material status of all elected officials and all governments", and therefore the full benefits that their are financially granted. Because today, he laments, "we do not know exactly what are the funds globally attributed to a minister and a ministry".
The researcher takes the example of the cost of representation of 150,000 or 120,000 euros available to ministers and ministers under guardianship, "something that was not known at all" French. "There should be clear rules, and authorities to control them," he insists.
The reports of the Assembly and the Government "give the impression of being between oneself"
If control bodies already exist, such as the Ethics Officer of the National Assembly or the Ethics Committee in the Senate, Jean-François Kerléo recalls that they remain "internal instances". Thus, notes he, the reports made Tuesday by the government and the National Assembly "give the feeling of a between-oneself", and do not allow to "reassure public opinion about the various scandals".
The scientific director of the Observatory of Public Ethics proposes for example to "externalize this control", by granting it to the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP). It should "constitutionalize the HATVP, put it directly in the Constitution, to make it a kind of super ethical authority that would be led to control the various costs and financial benefits."