All last summer, Suez, a French energy company, lobbied to get parliamentary approval for its proposed merger with Gaz de France. In July, just weeks before the debate in the Assemblée nationale, Suez invited 20 key politicians on a three-day junket to Berlin, including tickets for the France/Italy World Cup final. Surely this was not in the hope of influencing the parliamentary vote?
Debate about corruption is in the air again in France, as it is in Britain and Germany. But it is not so much headline-grabbing, megabuck corruption at the corporate level of BAE or Siemens: France lived through that a few years ago with its oil company, Total. It is more the everyday kind, insidious and ambiguous, what cynics call the way of the world.
A five-year study being carried out by Cevipof, the political research department of Sciences Po, finds that 78 per cent of French people consider the government "quite or very" corrupt. 70 per cent believe their president is corrupt, and 68 per cent say MPs are too. As we approach a series of elections—presidential in April, parliamentary in June—this is depressing, particularly for those politicians seeking re-election. But Cevipof has reassuring news for them: a lingering whiff of corruption does not spoil your chances at the ballot box. Even a court conviction for corruption is not an impediment to a career in politics—in fact, it may actually help.
There are several examples of convicted politicians being re-elected, most recently Alain Juppé, former MP, former mayor of Bordeaux, and former prime minister (and "The best among us," according to that master of irony Jacques Chirac). Convicted in 2004 for diverting ratepayers' money to pay party workers, Juppé had his original sentence of ten years' ineligibility to elected office reduced on appeal to 12 months. After a pleasant sabbatical in Canada, he bounced home, saying he wanted all his old jobs back, starting with Bordeaux town hall. But there was a perfectly good mayor in place, and the next elections were not due until 2008. No problem! A third of the town council (Juppé's party) obligingly resigned, forcing an election. Juppé was returned with a 56 per cent majority. But that figure is less than half the story, since less than half the Bordeaux electorate voted—55 per cent abstained. So while a conviction for corruption may not affect your diehard followers, it deters many others from voting at all—or pushes them towards the only party which has made a policy of stamping out corruption in politics—the Front National. Corruption among politicians was the second reason for voting Le Pen at the last election.
That was precisely why Séverine Tessier set up Anticor, an association of politicians fighting corruption—largely among their colleagues. Given the increase in abstentions and support for Le Pen, she believes something must be done to improve the image of politicians before this year's elections. For a start, Anticor wants to make lifetime ineligibility for office mandatory for any politician convicted of financial misdemeanours. Then there is the grey area of lobbying. Tessier is well placed to know about the thin divide between lobbying and corruption—she is a parliamentary assistant, working within the Assemblée nationale in Paris. Assistants are employed directly by their député, paid from a small monthly kitty. If députés are not re-elected, their assistants lose their jobs. Low pay and job insecurity make them vulnerable to the companies seeking influence over politicians. They are offered every kind of inducement, including well-paid sinecure jobs, in return for pushing a particular cause. "Lobbying in itself is acceptable," Tessier told me, "but it has to be within defined limits."
But where are the limits? What about those World Cup tickets? Cevipof finds that many people have difficulty defining what is acceptable and what is not—especially in everyday life. For example, (ab)using friendship with a local politician to get a friend a council flat or job—70 per cent say not serious. To get jobs or housing, anything goes. But a mayor who agrees to help only if you join his party is considered corrupt. More ambiguous is accepting a cruise paid for by a client: most say it's not corrupt, simply a way of saying thank you. But what if the cruise was mentioned beforehand?
Corruption is a serious problem in France, say 60 per cent of those polled by Cevipof, nearly a third say they would not report it. Perception and tolerance depend on education and income: those without degrees and on lower incomes are more severe; the better qualified and better paid tolerate it, maybe because they benefit from it, or hope to in the future. If that's true, the chances of changing attitudes are slim. The only way to tighten up is by legislating—unlikely, though, since that needs a majority of uncorrupted députés… Unless Anticor takes those only marginally corrupted on a junket somewhere. Berlin, perhaps? Not quite the same without the football.
Read Tim King's blog on the French presidential election
