Emmanuel Macron sharply replied on Tuesday July 12 to criticism of his privileged exchanges in the past with the multinational Uber, revealed by The Guardian, and sent to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the ICIJ, and to forty-two partner media, including The World.
“I am extremely proud (…), it is very difficult to create jobs without companies or entrepreneurs”, assumed the head of state. “I would do it again tomorrow and the day after tomorrow,” he insisted after visiting the STMicroelectronics company site near Grenoble.
As part of the “Uber Files”, an investigation based on thousands of internal Uber documents, Le Monde concluded that there was a secret “deal” between Uber and Emmanuel Macron when he was in Bercy, between 2014 and 2016.
The oppositions continued on Tuesday to accuse the head of state of having defended the interests of Uber at the time when the company was developing its presence in France, when he himself was François’s economy minister. Holland.
The formations constituting the left alliance Nupes will request a parliamentary commission of inquiry, confirmed the first secretary of the Socialist Party (PS), Olivier Faure.
“Here is a minister who (…) quietly, secretly, built a deal with the company that everyone knows was that of the lowest social bidder, which was the Trojan horse of the destruction of ‘part of our labor code,’ he criticized on LCI.
“I fully embrace it, looking at you!” »
The National Rally (RN) wants to launch a fact-finding mission, announced its president, Jordan Bardella, according to whom Mr. Macron was at Bercy “the entry point for private interests in France”.
“We introduce a kind of atmosphere that would be to say that seeing business leaders, especially foreign ones, would be bad. But I fully embrace it, and looking at you! “, replied Mr. Macron. “I’ve seen business leaders, the horror! I saw them, it was always official, with collaborators. I’m proud of it ! If they have created jobs in France, I am very proud of that. »
“As one of my predecessors would say, it affects me one without moving the other,” insisted the head of state, in reference to a sentence attributed to Jacques Chirac.
“I brought in companies, I helped French entrepreneurs, I especially helped young people, who were not offered jobs, who came from difficult neighborhoods, who had no opportunities jobs, to find one for the first time in their lives, and for thousands of them,” President Macron pleaded on Tuesday.
“Then,” he continued to a few reporters, “we regulated those jobs, closing, locking down at the French and European level. (…) When I became president, we regulated the sector without any complacency. We are the first country that regulated the platforms and then we pushed it to the European level”.
“It’s not Chirac who wants”, quips Boris Vallaud
The VTC system, which made the fortune of Uber and other players who appeared in the 2010s, had aroused the revolt of taxis at the time. “We helped taxis as much as possible during the crisis,” Macron said on Tuesday. “I have always respected this profession, but we had a system that was administratively closed. We did not give enough licenses. »
““Hyperproud” to trample labor law, encourage deregulation and support a firm champion of tax evasion: the president persists and signs”, tweeted the communist Fabien Roussel after the presidential remarks.
“It’s not Chirac who wants … the right words are not always enough to hide bad manners”, reacted Boris Vallaud, leader of the PS deputies.
