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France bans MPs from hiring family members

French politicians will no longer be able to hand out jobs to family members, after a parliamentary vote.

Published: 27 July 2017 16:11 CEST
France bans MPs from hiring family members
Francois Fillon and wife Penelope. Photo: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP

Employing 'immediate family members' will be punishable by fines of €45,000 and up to three years in prison under the new law.

That means no hiring of spouses, children, or parents.

And politicians who wish to employ more distant family members, such as cousins or a spouse's non-immediate family, for example, will be under obligation to report this. That's also the case for 'cross-employment', or politicians hiring the family members of another MP or minister.

France's National Assembly voted through the measure, first proposed in June, with a show of hands on Thursday morning. 

The new law will apply both to ministers and MPs, roughly one in six of whom currently employs a family member. The measures form a key part of President Emmanuel Macron's flagship bill “for the moralization of public life” and is one of the new government's first laws to be approved.

All parliamentary groups had been in favour of applying the ban to government ministers, however there was some opposition to its extension to members of parliament.

Julien Aubert, of the Republicains party, compared the bill to dealing with swine flu. “One pig is sick, so you slaughter the whole flock,” he said, according to Le Figaro.

But Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet warned MPs that “any retreat in this matter would be very badly perceived”.

The issue of politicians hiring family members was brought into the spotlight by the 'fake jobs' scandal widely seen as the downfall of presidential candidate Francois Fillon.

In late January, French media revealed that Fillon's wife Penelope had received nearly €900,000 for a job as his assistant – despite very little evidence of her doing any such work in a scandal that became known as “Penelope gate”. 

He had also paid two of his children for jobs related to his government role, and the inquiry into the scandal is still underway.

Fillon's support plummeted following the revelations, eventually being knocked out in the first round of the elections after previously being widely seen as the favourite to win.

Centrist Emmanuel Macron, who was elected President in the May election, promised during his own campaign that he would try to end the practice.

The Macron administration is planning a separate crackdown on how MPs use their allocated budgets.

Each member of parliament currently receives an annual €130,000 budget on top of their pay, and the new government says there are not enough checks in place as to how these funds are used.

POLITICS

France’s Uyghurs say Xi visit a ‘slap’ from Macron

Uyghurs in France on Friday said President Emmanuel Macron welcoming his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping next week was tantamount to "slapping" them.

Published: 4 May 2024 15:23 CEST
France's Uyghurs say Xi visit a 'slap' from Macron

Xi is due to make a state visit to France on Monday and Tuesday.

Dilnur Reyhan, the founder of the European Uyghur Institute and a French national, said she and others were “angry” the Chinese leader was visiting.

“For the Uyghur people — and in particular for French Uyghurs — it’s a slap from our president, Emmanuel Macron,” she said, describing the Chinese leader as “the executioner of the Uyghur people”.

Beijing stands accused of incarcerating more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a network of detention facilities across the Xinjiang region.

Campaigners and Uyghurs overseas have said an array of abuses take place inside the facilities, including torture, forced labour, forced sterilisation and political indoctrination.

A UN report last year detailed “credible” evidence of torture, forced medical treatment and sexual or gender-based violence — as well as forced labour — in the region.

But it stopped short of labelling Beijing’s actions a “genocide”, as the United States and some other Western lawmakers have done.

Beijing consistently denies abuses and claims the allegations are part of a deliberate smear campaign to contain its development.

It says it is running vocational training centres in Xinjiang which have helped to combat extremism and enhance development.

Standing beside Reyhan at a press conference in Paris, Gulbahar Haitiwaji, who presented herself as having spent three years in a detention camp, said she was “disappointed”.

“I am asking the president to bring up the issue of the camps with China and to firmly demand they be shut down,” she said.

Human Rights Watch on Friday urged Macron during the visit to “lay out consequences for the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity and deepening repression”.

“Respect for human rights has severely deteriorated under Xi Jinping’s rule,” it said.

“His government has committed crimes against humanity… against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, adopted draconian legislation that has erased Hong Kong’s freedoms, and intensified repression of government critics across the country.”

“President Macron should make it clear to Xi Jinping that Beijing’s crimes against humanity come with consequences for China’s relations with France,” said Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch

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