Paris (AFP)
Prime Minister Édouard Philippe judges that "Jean-Paul Delevoye's good faith is total", after the high commissioner for pensions was questioned about his parallel activities, according to a statement published on the Parisien website on Saturday.
The "Monsieur pensions" of the government admitted having failed to declare to the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP), which scrutinizes the heritage and activities of members of the government, his function as a voluntary administrator in a training institute of insurance, Ifpass. Other oversights have appeared since: he has been a volunteer member of the SNCF Foundation's board of directors since 2016, and chairs the Hauts-de-France Regional Observatory for Public Order.
Mr. Delevoye also combined his government function with that, paid, of president of a think tank of the world of education, Parallaxe - cumulation which he had declared but which, he learned since, was not not authorized.
According to the head of government, "he explained this. When he was certain that something in his statement was wrong, he both resigned from the mandates for which he was not paid, and s is committed to immediately reimburse the sums in question ". "I think that Jean-Paul Delevoye's good faith is total," he added.
Mr. Delevoye has not ruled out resigning to preserve the pension reform of which he is the architect and which is contested on all sides. "It is not for me to judge but if I felt, at one time, that I became a subject of weakness, I would draw the consequences," he said on Friday to Liberation.
The Paris prosecutor asked the HATVP for details on the failure to declare Mr. Delevoye's activity. A meeting of the High Authority college will be held on Wednesday.
© 2019 AFP