The lifelong perks and privileges granted to former French presidents and ex-prime ministers cost the French taxpayer millions of euros every year in a system that has, until now, remained largely confidential.
One year after lodging an official request under the terms of a 1978 law governing public access to administrative documents, Mediapart has gained access to the detail and official purposes of the publicly-paid sums allocated to the three former heads of state and nine prime ministers.
The documents reveal a staggering generosity of the public purse. In 2014, it provided 89,000 euros for the purchase of cars for former prime ministers François Fillon (in office between 2007 and 2012), Édouard Balladur (1993-1995) and Michel Rocard (1988-1991). Meanwhile, former prime minister Édith Cresson, who served less than a year in the post between 1991 and 1992, receives an annual 35,000 euros for the services of an “assistant” she employs .
Dominique de Villepin, French prime minister between 2005 and 2007, is granted the yearly services of a chauffeur (at a cost in 2014 of 40,000 euros), and despite the fact that he spends a large amount of his time travelling abroad.
The total annual cost of the state-paid perks granted to former French presidents was finally made public last year thanks to the campaigning of Socialist Party Member of Parliament (MP) René Dosière. In January 2015, Dosière, who has spent years tracking and exposing the gravy-train excesses of French politicians, revealed that former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who left office in 1981, Jacques Chirac, who retired from office and politics in 2007, and Nicolas Sarkozy, who served between 2007 and 2012, together receive a yearly 6.2 million euros in perks of various kinds.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Mediapart has accessed the detail of those perks, which include a yearly payment to Giscard d’Estaing of 5,000 euros for car fuel, 35 years after he was ousted from office in presidential elections won by François Mitterrand. Sarkozy, meanwhile, is provided with 26 mobile phone lines, although the former president is now head of the right-wing Republican party (Les Républicains, or LR).
The three surviving former presidents are granted the yearly perks for life, and include offices, staff, office equipment, rent, vehicles and even dry-cleaning costs. Giscard d’Estaing, 90, receives the most, costing the taxpayer 2.5 million euros per year, followed by Sarkozy, 61, at an annual 2.2 million euros, and by Chirac, 83, who receives 1.5 million euros per year.
The three also receive close to 6,000 euros per month as a personal payment. In the case of Giscard d’Estaing, this comes on top of the 12,000 euros per month he is paid as a member of France’s Constitutional Council.
In January 2015 Mediapart addressed a request for the detail of the sums paid to former presidents and prime ministers with the French prime minister’s office, which manages both. The documented sums were passed on to Mediapart only this month, after an independent commission for the right of access to administrative documents, the CADA, approved the request.
The document shows that in 2014, Giscard d’Estaing’s office rental cost the public purse 276,683 euros, against 226,290 euros claimed by Sarkozy. What might comparatively be called “petty costs” that same year included a payment to Giscard d’Estaing of 10,571 euros to refund his newspaper and magazine purchases (which Sarkozy did not claim). The document also reveals that Chirac has been lent 19 state-owned artworks, including an engraving by Max Ernst (see the full list immediately below).
Above: the list provided by the prime minister’s office detailing the annual payments (2011-2014) received by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac (in French only).
Meanwhile, the information received by Mediapart shows that the perks and privileges paid to former prime ministers amounted to a total of 2.9 million euros between 2011 and 2014 – excluding security costs - of which 860,000 euros were paid out in 2014 alone.
All former prime ministers receive a car, its fuel costs, a driver, and an assistant. Many of them conserve this privilege after taking up a new private activity or an electoral mandate (and in the case of Jean-Pierre Raffarin and François Fillon, both) which comes with its own perks. Of all former prime ministers, only Laurent Fabius, now French foreign minister, has not claimed his right to a driver and assistant, although in 2006 he received a new car, purchased by the state at a cost of 39,000 euros.
The information received by Mediapart shows that in 2014 the state paid 102,000 euros for staff employed by former prime minister Alain Juppé, now mayor of Bordeaux and hopeful to become the Republican party candidate in presidential elections in 2017. The same year, the state paid 97,000 euros for staff employed by Dominique de Villepin (whose private business notched up a turnover of 1.8 million euros in 2014), while it also paid 89,000 euros in staff costs for Jean-Pierre Raffarin (now a Senator, and who as such enjoys numerous parallel perks granted to members of the Upper House).
Lionel Jospin’s staff cost the state 82,000 euros in 2014. Jospin retired from politics after his presidential election defeat in 2002, and was appointed a member of the Constitutional Council in 2015. Meanwhile, staff employed in 2014 by Michel Rocard, prime minister between 1988 and 1991, cost 79,000 euros (Rocard is employed by the French government as an ambassador for international negotiations on rights to the Arctic and Antarctic), while the employees of Jean-Marc Ayrault (in office between 2012 and 2014, now an MP) cost 75,000 euros. Édouard Balladur, now 86 and retired from politics, that same year received 45,000 euros for the remuneration of staff while Edith Cresson, also retired and out of office since 1992, was granted staff costs of 33,000 euros (see the full list immediately below).
Above: the list provided by the prime minister’s office detailing the annual payments (2011-2014) received by former French PMs for the remuneration of staff and vehicle costs (in French only).
Until now, only the perks and privileges of former presidents have been brought into question, beginning in December 2014 when five socialist MPs published an open letter in weekly magazine L’Obs denouncing the sums paid to Nicolas Sarkozy and used by him “for personal ends”. More recently, President François Hollande commissioned a report into the payments granted to former presidents. The report, prepared by the head of the national court of audit (la Cour des comptes), Didier Migaud, and the vice-president of the State council (conseil d’État), Jean-Marc Sauvé, was completed and handed to Hollande several months ago but remains confidential.
Hollande revealed the existence of the report on January 13th, when he pledged to make it public “within the coming days”. Contacted by Mediapart, the presidential office declined to comment on the subject.
However, Mediapart understands that the report recommends that former presidents are no longer given the automatic option of becoming a member of France’s Constitutional Council, a post which comes with a significant remuneration, and that this should entail raising the 6,000-euro monthly income granted to them. Migaud and Sauvé also advise that this monthly income be reduced if the recipient takes up remunerated professional activity. The report is also believed to recommend that the vast payments for material and staff costs be reduced over time.
François Hollande has previously pledged he will not sit on the Constitutional Council once he has left office. However, the accumulation of his different pension rights (including those as a former senior civil servant, a former MP and local council member), will provide him with a net income of about 10,000 euros without taking into account his monthly income as a former president (which would bring his total net monthly income to just more than 15,000 euros).
An overhaul of the system would also finally provide a proper legal basis for the privileges provided to former presidents, for the justification of the allocation of the vast public funds for the benefit of the once-ruling elite is a 1985 type-written letter by then-socialist prime minister Laurent Fabius addressed to then-president François Mitterrand.
-------------------------
- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse