the European Commission presented its third annual report on the rule of law in the 27 EU countries on Wednesday.
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This annual report on the rule of law is published in the midst of the Uber Files affair. The European Commission asks Paris to “ensure that the rules on lobbying activities are consistently applied to all relevant actors, including the highest executive positions”noting that“many concerns persist” in this area. These recommendations appear in the chapter devoted to France of this report, written before the revelations, and which concerns the 27 countries of the European Union.
As part of the Uber Files, a vast investigation by journalists based on thousands of internal Uber documents revealed the privileged exchanges between Emmanuel Macron when he was Minister of the Economy (2014-2016) and the American company private drivers.
>> SURVEY. Uber Files: how Emmanuel Macron got involved when the VTC giant arrived in France
The Commission notes that a recommendation by the Group of States against Corruption (Greco), the anti-corruption body of the Council of Europe, has not been implemented: it relates to the obligation to declare contacts between lobbyists and people in high executive positions.
El Greco had recommended, in a report published in January, that “persons exercising high executive functions are required to report publicly and at regular intervals on the representatives of interests met and the topics discussed” and “all interest representatives who meet with a public official (…), whether they themselves have requested the interview or not, have the obligation to register in the register of representatives of interests”.
For its part, the Commission also considers that the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP), responsible for the public register of interest representatives, “lack of human and technical resources”.