The Economist
written by Staff
Tuesday April 16, 2013
“I don’t like rich people,” François Hollande famously declared on a French television show a few years ago. When campaigning for the presidency last year, he declared war on the “world of finance”, and promised a top income-tax rate of 75% on the rich. Now his anti-rich people rhetoric seems to be backfiring: seven of his government ministers, as well as his prime minister, are millionaires. This was revealed after tough new disclosure rules obliged the entire cabinet (see picture above) to publish their assets online by April 15th.
Under the new rules, far tougher than the British version, ministers had to declare the value of all their assets, including property, shares and bank accounts. The French are usually discreet about money, and dislike ostentatious displays of wealth. So the rules prompted some discomfort in government, and much delight in the press. Most daily newspapers this morning ran double-page spreads, if not league tables, of wealth. Le Parisien, a popular national daily, splashed across its front page: “38 ministers, 37 houses, 29 flats, 40 cars, 2 boats and 3 bicycles…”
The results revealed a number of surprises. Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister who descends from a family of dealers in antiques and art, declared over €6m ($7.9m) in assets, including a flat in Paris that he valued at €2.7m and two country houses. The lesser-known minister for the elderly, Michèle Delaunay, a former doctor, revealed wealth of €5.2m, including two properties in Bordeaux and two houses on the south-west coast of France. Michel Sapin, the labour minister, owns three country houses as well as farmland, and a flat in Paris, worth a total of over €2m. Even the prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, a former schoolteacher, turned out to be a millionaire, with two properties to his name.
Cécile Duflot, the Green housing minister who makes much of taking public transport to work, owns two cars, neither of them electric. Mr Fabius, despite his asset base, has a €30,000 overdraft. Arnaud Montebourg, the left-wing industry minister who rails against globalisation, owns three properties and a Charles Eames armchair worth €4,300. French Socialist ministers turn out to be enthusiastic collectors of property, but almost none owns any shares.
Mr Hollande devised the new rules in haste as part of an effort to clean up public life after his former budget minister, Jérôme Cahuzac, confessed to lying to parliament about a secret foreign bank account he had held for 20 years. France has until now had some of the least demanding transparency rules for its elected officials, although the value of the president’s assets is made public upon his election. Mr Hollande’s declaration, published last year, includes two flats in Cannes and a house in the south of France, for a total value that he declares of around €1.2m, just under the threshold at which the country’s wealth tax kicks in.
Now Mr Hollande wants to pass a law to extend the disclosure rule to all deputies. This may prove far harder. As it is, some of his rich ministers found the exercise painful. Ms Delaunay described it as an “ordeal”, and said that she was “not a woman of luxury” but had worked hard all her life. Many deputies, on the left and the right, are outraged at the idea of following the ministers’ example. Even Claude Bartolone, the Socialist speaker of parliament, denounced the disclosure rules as “voyeurism” and feared the advent of “paparazzi democracy”. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of the would-be revolutionary left and neither a minister nor French deputy, mocked the whole process by declaring on his blog his height and weight, stating that he owned no paintings, no car, no yacht and no horses—and that he did not dye his hair.
The real question is whether the new disclosure rules will help to prevent another Cahuzac affair. The former budget minister fell because he lied about his foreign bank account, and this was exposed by Mediapart, an investigative news website, and pursued by investigating judges. So far, the ministers’ declarations have not been verified, although Mr Hollande wants to set up a new body to do so. In the meantime, there is confusion about what the new rules are supposed to achieve. Libération, a left-leaning newspaper, said in an editorial that there is a risk of “confusing wealth with dishonesty”. And the exclusive focus on wealth masks other potential conflicts of interest in a country where many deputies are also civil servants, and more still serve as elected officials at various levels of government simultaneously.
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