“We are stunned by an avalanche of standards”, denounces the Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises

Employers’ organizations challenge the President of the Republic in an open letter, published on Sunday. They ask him to speed up the administrative simplification project. The president of the CPME François Asselin denounces on franceinfo a “normative tsunami”.

“We are stunned by an avalanche of standards”denounces Sunday November 19 on franceinfo François Asselin, president of the Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises (CPME) while he publishes an open letter to Emmanuel Macron in the newspaper The gallery with Patrick Martin, from Medef, and Dominique Métayer from local businesses (U2P).

Business leaders are calling for administrative simplification. “Many business leaders are starting to give upwarns Francois Asselin. After a while, we no longer know how to move forward.”, he emphasizes. In 2014, François Hollande launched a simplification project. But European standards further complicate the task of entrepreneurs, according to him: “We are potentially facing an administrative wave which risks overwhelming us,” he fears.

franceinfo: Why are you relaunching this sea serpent?

François Asselin: We are relaunching it because there comes a time when the precautionary principle is transformed into the principle of inaction. We can no longer undertake. A country that no longer undertakes is a country that, unfortunately, is declining. We are bombarded by an avalanche of standards.

Over the past 20 years, French law has doubled in volume. For example, in 2021, we have 67 new laws, 91 ordinances, 1,843 additional decrees, 83,570 pages published in the Official Journal. So much so that we, the economic actors, are completely bogged down by the texts. After a while, we no longer know how to move forward. We absolutely must avoid this normative tsunami that we are unable to limit.

Why can’t we simplify our standards?

In 2014 under François Hollande, there was this famous simplification plan with the idea that in the absence of a response from the administration, this constitutes acceptance. Following this decision, there were more than 2,500 exemptions everywhere. So much so that today, we no longer know, when we are in contact with the administration, whether its silence constitutes acceptance or not. It’s ultimately more complicated than before.

“Europe also produces standards. And here too, we are potentially facing an administrative wave which risks overwhelming us, even if only everything concerns ecological transitions.”

François Asselin, president of the CPME

at franceinfo

Why do the Germans manage to do better?

We have an unfortunate habit, which is that we like to transpose a European directive, namely that when a text leaves Europe, we always have the ambition to become the first in the class and to put a lot of effort into coercive measures that restrict local economic actors from implementing them. For example, when it came to implementing digital transparency within companies, for us it took dozens of pages of implementation whereas in Germany, an SME had a double-sided sheet.

Rules and laws also serve to protect employees, sometimes the environment, and to ensure equality and fairness in certain procedures. Maybe it’s better than the law of the jungle?

We completely agree. It’s not about finding the law of the jungle. Today, the jungle is the laws. We place so much obligation around employee status that you end up weakening even employee status. This is where the abuses begin. When there were abuses in the suburbs, at schools, administrative buildings and businesses, in the country we had to pass exceptional laws to speed up the procedures. But why not simply have standards, laws that allow us to move quickly?


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