The Minister of Transformation and the Public Service, Stanislas Guérini, prohibits handling files concerning Google due to a risk of conflict of interest

The Minister of Transformation and the Public Service will not be able to process files related to Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, and its subsidiaries, according to a decree published on Tuesday June 7 in the Official newspaper. The reason: the new minister’s wife, Stanislas Guérini, works at Google Cloud France, a subsidiary of the web giant, as indicated by the politician’s page on the website of the High Authority for the Transparency of public life.

This decree quotes article 2-1 of decree n° 59-178 of January 22, 1959 relating to the attributions of the ministers, according to which “the minister who considers himself to be in a situation of conflict of interest informs the Prime Minister in writing, specifying the content of the questions for which he considers not to have to exercise his powers”. Under this text, the Minister “refrains from giving instructions to the administrations placed under his authority or at his disposal, which receive their instructions directly from the Prime Minister”.

It is therefore the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, who will manage the files concerning the parent company of Google or even “cloud hosting of state data”underline on Twitter a journalist from Parisian.

This is not the first time that a risk of potential conflict of interest leads to the withdrawal of certain attributions to a minister. In 2018, for example, Françoise Nyssen, publisher then appointed Minister of Culture, had her powers withdrawn by the Prime Minister at the time, Edouard Philippe, concerning “supervision of the National Book Center” and “the economic regulation of the literary publishing sector“, as well as the right to intervene in any case involving “the company +Actes Sud+“.