The high point of Monday’s agenda at the French lower house, the National Assembly, had initially been a motion of censure against the government, tabled by the Left. But, inevitably, the debates soon turned to the “Uber Files” revelations of the behind-closed-doors help given to the US firm’s business in France by Emmanuel Macron when he was economy minister in 2014.
The censure motion against Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne’s new government was above all a symbolic move by the broad leftwing parliamentary coalition, the NUPES (for “the New Popular Ecological and Social Union”), to put down its marker as the real opposition, a claim disputed by the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party.
The legislative elections in June caused a major upset for Macron following his re-election as president in April. His centre-right party and its smaller allies, gathered together for the June elections under the banner Ensemble, lost their absolute majority in the 577-seat National Assembly, although remain the largest single block with 245 Members of Parliament (MPs). While the far-right RN party made historic gains, with a total of 89 seats, and the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party totalling 61, the NUPES alliance gained 131.
But the NUPES coalition is composed of several parties, the largest among them being the radical-left La France Insoumise (LFI), and includes the Parti Socialiste (PS), the Green EELV party, and the Parti Communiste. Which leaves the far-right RN as the largest single party of opposition.
The censure motion was defeated on Monday as predicted – both the RN and the conservatives of LR had made clear they would not lend it their support, dismissing it as an attention-seeking stunt by the LFI.
When the debating got underway, the leader of the LFI parliamentary group, Mathilde Panot, speaking directly in front of the French prime minister, knew very well that the motion of no confidence would be lost. “Those who will not vote this motion will be in agreement with the ransacking of our rights […], will be the accomplices of your [the PM’s] inaction over climate change [and of] the loathsome pension reform,” she said, before turning her attention to MPs across the benches. “Who is in agreement here with the policies of social breakage and injustice? For the return of the health pass? Who is in agreement with the president of lobby groups [and] who rides along for Uber?”
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“Uber” – the name was out. During what became a rowdy session, it would be pronounced on numerous occasions. Cyrielle Chatelain, of the EELV green party denounced what she called a society of “serfdom” championed by “the Macronie”, the derogatory term often employed to describe the French president’s political fold. Communist MP Pierre Dharréville said Macron, was “on the side of the law of money, of the bosses of Uber and of McKinsey, of low-cost labour and 'mal-employment'”.
Since the first revelations of the “Uber Files” were published on Sunday, Macron has become mired in a scandal which concerns him personally, as was the case in the scandal involving his disgraced former security aide and bodyguard Alexandre Benalla (see more here and here).
The so-called Uber Files is a massive data leak of hundreds of thousands of documents and emails that were passed to The Guardian and investigated in partnership with several other media, which reveal the US taxi firm’s dubious practices and extensive lobbying of politicians. Among the latter was Macron, when he was economy minister under the presidency of François Hollande. He confidentially and actively championed Uber’s interests in starting up its “ride-sharing” business in France, which became its first European market, and was even on first-name terms with the Uber boss Travis Kalanick.
After the humbling loss of his absolute majority in Parliament, the fiasco of the policing of the Champions League final in Paris and the controversy over rape claims that forced his minister for the disabled, Damien Abad, out of government, the executive is back on the defensive.
“Uber allowed the creation of thousands of jobs,” retorted Karl Olive, an MP from Macron’s Renaissance party (formerly the LREM), and who is close to the president, during Monday’s debates. “As if by chance, all of that came on the eve of a motion of censure,” he said of Uber Leaks.
“That a minister intervened in a sector of activity to boost it, I can’t see where the problem lies,” said MP Philippe Vigier, from the UDI, a centre-right party allied to Renaissance. On the subject of the secret meetings Macron held with the Uber representatives, he sarcastically commented: “I know very well that these days one must declare at what time one brushes one’s teeth.”
But the leftwing MPs continued with their offensive. “What a scandal,” exclaimed Parti Socialiste MP Arthur Delaporte. “The corporations of worldwide capitalism who practice tax optimisation and pauperise employees had an open door at Bercy [the French economy ministry […] Macron, who is the friend of finance, became the lobbyist for Uber.” He was keen to point out that the socialist president at the time, François Hollande, and his socialist prime minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, were not in favour of Uber’s implantation in France.
Macron, a "hidden sales rep for Uber"
Underlining the secrecy of the dealings Macron had with Uber, appearing as if he was bound hand and foot with the private firm that employed hostile methods, Green EELV party MP Sandra Regol declared: “In any other country, a president or prime minister placed into question in such a manner would immediately resign,” adding that she “fell off” her chair when reading press reports about the leaks.
She said she knew of Macron’s alleged relations with lobby groups, and notably that of French hunters, but that the Uber Files revelations were of a far more serious nature. “It is a state scandal,” she opined, “worse than the Benalla affair.”
Meanwhile, MP Danielle Simonnet of the radical-left LFI party, and who had vigorously opposed, alongside French taxi drivers, Uber’s arrival in France, raised questions about what Macron might have received in return for helping Uber. “We knew that Macron played a role in the tentacular practices of the company, but what was the extent of his work as a hidden sales rep for Uber?” she asked. “What were the compensations? Did he place pressure on the state apparatus to support the multinational?”.
The four main components of the NUPES coalition, the LFI, PCF, PS and the Greens, announced they are to seek the creation of a parliamentary committee of inquiry into the affair, although the labyrinthine parliamentary rules for succeeding in this make it certain to be a long-haul project. The newly appointed president of the National Assembly’s finance commission, Éric Coquerel from the LFI, spoke of taking the affair to the National Assembly’s regulatory bureau in order to investigate further what he called the “organic links” between Macron and Uber.
The far-right MPs of the RN did not raise the matter during Monday’s session. The party has however said it is in favour of the creation of a “mission of information” over the revelations. Earlier, on Monday morning, RN MPs had called a press conference in which they denounced “the first scandal” of Macron’s new term in office, and “the incestuous relationships between a capitalism of connivance and the small Parisian circle”.
There was a more cautious approach from the conservative LR party, whose MP Annie Genevard told Mediapart that she did not know “at this stage” what will be the future position of her parliamentary group. “This story reveals, at the least, the curious practices which were in place within the [one and] same government at the time: the prime minister and ministers who were very distrustful, hostile even, towards Uber, and at the same time the minister of the economy which opened up the French market to it,” she said.
“What interests does Macron serve, those of the French [people] or those of a multinational?” asked LFI party MP Paul Vannier, adding: “We’ll not give up.”
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The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse