While austerity measures, budgetary discipline and spending cuts are the watchwords of debates inside the French parliament, the institution itself enjoys a remarkably undisciplined and high-spending regime that pays parliamentary groups yearly subsidies of almost 10 million euros and without demanding any account to ensure the money is spent for legitimate purposes.
Earlier this year, Mediapart revealed the fraudulent misuse of funds totaling 44 million euros paid to French Members of Parliament to offset professional expenses. The investigation exposed in particular the case of Pascal Terrasse, a Socialist Party MP for the Ardèche department (county) in south central France, who used part of the expenses allowance to pay for family holidays abroad and bar bills, highlighting the total lack of transparency and control exercised by the lower house, the National Assembly.
Now Mediapart can reveal how the National Assembly’s Bureau, its high administrative body, subsidises the finances of the chamber’s six political groups without imposing any surveillance of how the funds, which will be increased next year to a total 10 million euros, are used.
Earlier this summer, after several weeks of discussions, the spread of the funds for the current parliament, elected in June, was finally agreed and rubber stamped. Sources from among the Left parliamentary majority have told Mediapart that the Socialist Party parliamentary group is to receive a monthly sum of 350,000 euros, and the conservative UMP group has been allocated 250,000 euros per month, while the smaller groups – ranging from the centre-right camp to the radical-left, and including the greens – will each receive a monthly 45,000 euros.
The money is destined to pay for the collective activities of each group, including committees and conferences, the hiring of special advisers for the study of proposed legislation, communication activities and research.
The total over a five-year term of parliament (which is the regular term, unless early elections are called) amounts to about 50 million euros, yet there is no assurance demanded, nor given, that these sums are entirely spent on legitimate purposes. The sums are never detailed in the National Assembly’s yearly budget report, and there is no control imposed over the way in which they are used, nor any information offered. Unlike political parties, parliamentary groups have no legal requirement to publish their accounts in public. Only a handful of MPs of each group have access to the figures.
For the public, it is impossible, for example, to demand how much was spent on opinion polls by the UMP group during the previous parliamentary term, nor how many staff were employed and on what wages by the current Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault when he was head of the socialist group between 1997 and 2012. Similarly, there is no account of fees paid to expert advisors or communications agencies.
During bitter divisions within the UMP group in early 2010, the party’s controversial MP Christian Vanneste challenged the group’s leader, Jean-François Copé, now secretary-general of the UMP, to detail its spending accounts, in vain.
The sums are so significant that they can be partly saved, year after year, and the total transferred from one parliamentary term to another to create a considerable war chest. Mediapart has learnt of how former UMP group president Jean-Louis Debré had accumulated several million euros in the group’s fund accounts by the time he stepped down following parliamentary elections in 2002. In what appears to be an exceptional move, Debré, now head of the Constitutional Council, duly took the initiative of sending a cheque to the National Assembly to reimburse the unspent sum. Contacted by Mediapart, Debré confirmed sending the cheque, although he said he could not remember for what amount. However, he did recall that he came in for criticism from his political allies for having relinquished the reserves.
The extraordinary lack of clarity over the financing of parliamentary groups in France had already prompted a sharp rebuke from the Council of Europe Group of States against Corruption, GRECO in a report delivered to the Council in 2009.
Questioned by Mediapart, Christian Bataille, MP and treasurer of the Socialist Party parliamentary group, said he would be in favour of setting up an official inspection of spending of the funds. “I propose that all the groups should from now be required to produce accounts certified by a statutory auditor,” he said. “The financial services of the National Assembly would inspect them once a year, and we would be required to keep proof of all our spending.” It remains to be seen whether Bataille’s suggestion will be taken up by the National Assembly’s president, Socialist Party MP Claude Bartelone, who has previously stated his intention of increasing accountability in the chamber’s practices.
'We have accounts, but no-one asks for them'
Under the previous parliament, the Socialist Party group was the only one to be registered as ‘an association as defined by the 1901 law’ (association loi 1901), a non-profit making statute that is largely chosen by charities, community groups and amateur sports associations. Under the legal requirements of the statute, it had to publish certified accounts. “That’s already something, if we were asked for our accounts books, we could produce them,” commented Bataille. “But no-one asks for them, we are subject to no external control,” added the socialist treasurer, who described the accounting of the conservative UMP and centrist groups as “even more supple”. Contacted by Mediapart, neither UMP group president Christian Jacob, nor his predecessor Jean-François Copé, wished to comment on the issue.
The National Assembly funds are not the only source of revenue for the parliamentary groups; they also levy payments from member MPs. The Socialist Party applies a progressive rate of monthly fees, according to the number of elected political titles held by the MP. This ranges from 100 euros per month for those whose only title is MP, to 400 euros per month for an MP who is also member of a regional council, and 1,200 euros per month for an MP who also heads a local authority. According to Mediapart’s calculations, the socialist group’s members during the 2007-2012 parliament paid it a total of 5 million euros – on top of the 15 million euros it was allocated by the National Assembly.
During the discussions over the sums allocated to the different groups for the current parliamentary term, the Socialist Party unsuccessfully tried to reduce by half the amount given to the four smaller groups (Centre Right, Centre Left, Radical Left and Greens), citing arguments for the need for budgetary tightening. In the end, they were accorded a monthly 45,000 euros each, the same figure allocated to the smallest groups since 2008.
“With less than 45,000 euros per month we wouldn’t have been able to manage,” claimed MP Barbara Pompili, the co-president of the Green group. “We agreed that the Assembly needed to economise, but to economise in an intelligent manner. To target the groups’ [financial] means was tantamount to targeting the heart of the lawmaking profession. Thankfully, the socialists finally understood what we were saying.”
The Greens levy a hefty 1,500 euros per month from their MPs, which, along with the National Assmbley financing, will allow them to hire eight staff. The Centre Left group, the ‘Radicaux de gauche et apparentés’, (who, despite the title, have little in common with the radical-left Front de Gauche), expect to hire just half as many. “We should manage with four staff at the most,” said Gérard Charasse, the group’s representative on the National Assembly Bureau.
Adding to the pressure on National Assembly president Claude Bartelone to introduce a system of control of the accounts of parliamentary groups is a planned increase, beginning next year, of a total of 1 million euros to the subsidies they receive. The hike makes Bartelone’s declared task of bringing down the Assembly’s spending in 2013 all the more acute.
“In return, he has asked us to economise on our expenses,” said Bernard Roman, Socialist Party administrative and finance officer (quaestor). “Decisions will therefore be taken this summer, in particular concerning transport,” he added. These are expected to include a ban on MPs from travelling First Class and a reduction in the number of so-called ‘friendship committees’ with foreign countries, some of which offer French lawmakers time off in exotic surrounds, as well as lowering the number of MPs entitled to sign up to them. Mediapart understands that the friendship committee with the Indian Ocean Maldive Islands has already been scrapped.
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English version: Graham Tearse