Henri Proglio's two-salary U-turn

The recently-confirmed new boss of the French utility giant, Electricité de France (EDF), has agreed to relinquish his rights to claim a second salary with his old company, the multinational Veolia, where he remains chairman of the board.

While his decision has effectively put an end to the debate over the salary controversy, there's now a new confab over a conflict of interests and whether he should be doing two jobs: one at the mainly (almost 85 per cent) state-owned company EDF and the other at the privatised Veolia.

And to many, the French government would appear to be sending out mixed messages as to where exactly it stands on the issue.

You might remember the story out of France last week about this country's government saying that Proglio, who was confirmed as the boss of EDF on Wednesday, would in fact be entitled to two salaries rather than one.

In short he would get €1.6 a year for his new job and retain a paid position of €450,000 a year at Veolia, the company where he was to remain chairman of the board.

The government appeared to be backtracking on its previous promise not to support a double-salary with among others both the finance minister, Christine Lagarde, and the minister of the budget, Eric Woerth, "explaining" why the decision was now justified.

Hardly the most credible of positions for Lagarde, who had promised back in November when Proglio was nominated for the job that there was "no question of overlapping of remuneration and therefore he would receive a single salary."

Pragmatic politics at its best perhaps from the finance minister.

A day after his confirmation, Proglio made things much easier for Lagarde (and the rest of the government) by "choosing" to give up on the smaller of the two salaries, although there was plenty of conjecture that Nicolas Sarkozy, had put pressure on the man who had supported him in his successful bid to become president in 2007.

So the end of the story - not.

Because of course it's one that won't go away and which over the weekend took on another dimension with calls from opposition party leaders for Proglio to cut completely all ties with Veolia.

Among them was François Bayrou, the leader of the centre party Mouvement démocrate (Democratic Movement, MoDem).

"When you're the boss of a public company, you should keep in mind the interests of the public," he said on national radio.

"And when you head up a very large private company you have to defend the interests of the shareholders," he continued.

"This creates a dual allegiance that is unbearable, and which is a complete contradiction to everything we have done in France for decades."

And what do you know, the French government also seemed to be preparing the ground to make it easier for Proglio to give up all links with Veolia with both Lagarde and Woerth returning to their original positions - sort of.

"It's not a situation that should last forever," said Lagarde on Sunday.

"He (Proglio) recognised that when he appeared before (parliamentary) commissions," she added.

A sentiment echoed by Woerth who also maintained that holding two jobs couldn't be a long-term solution.

"When you're in a business which has international contracts, it requires keeping in constant contacts with clients, and not having to time to do other things," he said.

"For me it's a temporary situation," he added.

All of which could make it easier as far as Marie-George Buffet; the leader of the Parti communiste français (French Communist Party, PCF), is concerned for Sarkozy to appear to "save the day" so-to-speak and make the announcement, should he so wish, that the boss of EDF will no longer have a role in Veolia.

The French president is due to appear on prime time television on Monday evening for an extensive interview and to answer questions from selected viewers - an ideal chance for him to express his thoughts on the matter, according to Buffet.

"It's entirely possible that he will make such an announcement because we've already seen how many times both Christine Lagarde and now Eric Woerth have changed their minds," she said on the Canal + news magazine La Matinale on Monday morning.

"And who's to say that Sarkozy won't suddenly 'discover' that it's completely scandalous that Proglio had a double salary and a double responsibility," she added.

EDF's Henri Proglio - the man with a Fat Cat salary

....and two jobs

It might only have been worth a one-liner in the middle of the broadcast on TF1's prime time news on Tuesday, but confirmation that Henri Proglio, the recently-appointed big cheese at the French utility giant, Electricité de France (EDF) would in fact be receiving a double salary, has nonetheless created the expected polemic here in France.

Nominated as president of the company last November, Proglio was officially named CEO on Wednesday and with the job comes a modest annual salary of €1.6.

But that isn't the only monthly income the 60-year-old will be able to enjoy because he'll be retaining a position in his previous company, the French multinational Veolia as chairman of the board for which he'll rake in another €450,000 annually.

Yes that's right. The man will be earning a cool €2 million a year because "He has two responsibilities and, therefore two salaries," as the minister of the budget Eric Woerth explains.

"And in reality, the sum of salaries is equal to what he earned before, so he (Proglio) hasn't actually had an increase in income," Woerth maintains.

The argument put forward by both Woerth and his government colleague, the finance minister Christine Lagarde, to justify why the government supports the double salary, and that Proglio is worth every cent he's going to be paid runs along the lines of stressing that it's not really that much money when you make a direct comparison with other countries.

"The salary is well behind that being paid to those in German, Italian or British-owned rivals," says Lagarde.

"And when you look at the earnings of those heading companies quoted on the CAC 40 it only puts him in 18th or 19th place."

But wait, what did Lagarde say back in November when Proglio was nominated for the job?

Ah yes something very much along the lines of there being "no question of overlapping of remuneration and therefore he would receive a single salary."

While government ministers have defended the double salary, perhaps the last word on the subject (for the moment) should be left to Aurélie Filippetti, the national secretary of the opposition Socialist party, who probably sums up best what many of those who don't agree with the move have been expressing.

"The combination of mandates, whether in politics or business, is definitely a very bad tradition in France," she says.

"Mr. Proglio presides over the destinies of two groups with a total of nearly 500,000 employees and combined sales of more than €100 billion," she continues.

And when it comes to the claim that the "best" need to be rewarded for the jobs they're doing, Filippetti doesn't mince her words.

"We can no longer bear to hear this completely fallacious reasoning," she says.

"What exists is actually a very exclusive club of privileged people who designate each other to positions of power as though they were playing musical chairs just like the Ancien régime."

France's lip-synching government ministers

It's the latest video to create a buzz on the Internet here in France; members of the governing centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement UMP) party lip-synching.

Most of the video was shot at the party's summer conference in Seignosse best remembered perhaps for THAT clip of the interior minister, Brice Hortefeux apparently making a remark which many interpreted as racist.

And it features - if that's the right word - several government ministers - past and present - letting their hair down and singing and dancing in perfect harmony, albeit it in playback.

The teaser came out last week with the official release of the full-length version set for release Friday 11 December.

But of course the French media has got hold its hands on it - so to speak - and the pirated version, complete with a Nicolas Sarkozy impersonator voice-over, is already doing the rounds.

The video is the brainchild of the UMP's youth wing. An attempt surely to appeal to the electorate ahead next year's regional elections in which several of the political "artistes" will be standing such as the minister for higher education and research, Valérie Pécresse, in Ile de France and the minister of employment, Xavier Darcos, in Aquitaine.

Also shaking their stuff and joining in the fun in a splendid show of solidarity in "Tous ceux qui veulent changer le monde" ("Everyone who wants to change the world") are several other frontline government ministers including Christine Lagarde, (finance), Eric Besson (immigration) and Eric Woerth (budget) as well as the junior minister for sports, Rama Yade, and the junior minister for family, Nadine Morano.

Not forgetting of course the former prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, or Rachida Dati, who until June this year was the justice minister and is now a member of the European parliament.

And so the list goes on.

Anyway without further ado, here it is. Sit back, enjoy and...er...sing along?

Le lip dub des jeunes de l'UMP... piraté!
par LePostfr

Have you recovered or are you still singing?

Earlier this year a similar lip-synched video from Daniel Cohn-Bendit's Europe Écologie party ahead of June's European parliamentary elections received more than 90,000 hits.

Election Européenne Lipdub Europe Écologie vote le 7 juin
par EuropeEcologie

While it would without doubt be stretching a point to say that it contributed to the party's success in the election in which it won over 16 per cent of the national vote and gained 14 seats in the European parliament, it certainly didn't do it any harm.

Something perhaps the youth wing of the UMP party is hoping it can repeat in next year's regional elections.

French government takes a break

You know summer is well and truly in full swing when the country's politicians pack up their bags and head off on their hols.

This year the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has given government ministers a three-week break.

Set aside the weather, disregard perhaps that it's the silly season for television and in particular for news, with so-called lighter stories dominating the bulletins.

Don't even think about the traffic chaos predicted for this weekend as juilletists (those who traditionally take their break in July) pack their bags and head home to be replaced by aoutiens (August holidaymakers) searching for sun: the two clogging motorway lanes, filling the airports to bursting point and battling for position at the major railway stations in the annual "crossover".

No, the real point of interest is how the country will manage for a couple of weeks as government ministers go on vacation.

Have no fears, this isn't a list of ALL 39 ministers and their chosen destinations. Instead it's a brief and less-than-serious look at where some of them are planning to spend the next few weeks, remembering all the time that a reported 51 per cent of French cannot afford to go away on holiday this year.

First up (of course) is the one person who isn't strictly speaking a minister; Sarkozy.

After his recent "malaise" - or "nerve attack" as it was first reported by some media outlets - he'll probably find it a little easier than might otherwise have been the case to follow doctors' advice and scale down his activities.

He'll be spending a quiet couple of weeks with his wife, Carla, at his parents-in-law's little pad in Cap Nègre in the south of France.

Not among his list of visitors presumably will be Jacques Laisné, the former prefect of the department of Var, where the Bruni-Tedeschi house is located.

Laisné lost his job a couple of months ago in the "septic tank" affair, in which he reportedly reneged on a promise to Sarkozy sort out a dispute over whether to replace the existing system of septic tanks with mains drainage and sewage system.

You can read more about that here.

Perhaps the minister who faces the toughest job come September when there'll be La Rentrée (the time when everyone gets back to work and schools reopen after the summer break) is the health minister, Roselyne Bachelot.

Without specifying exactly where she'll be passing her time, Bachelot has promised to remain "a maximum of one hour" from her ministry, ready to tackle any threat there might be from the expected H1N1 outbreak.

Another couple of government members for whom you could well spare a thought perhaps are the minister of finance, Christine Lagarde, and the minister of employment, Xavier Darcos.

They'll both be reportedly taking along work with them.

Ah such is the life for those in office.

And then there's the minister of industry, Christian Estrosi, who has recently faced a number of ongoing disputes, most notably the threat of of workers at the bankrupt New Fabris car factory in Chatellerault, southwest of Paris, to blow up the factory.

He says he'll only be taking long weekends because anything else would "be unreasonable".

Some though can apparently afford time for a proper holiday, and a couple of them could even bump into each other.

Both Eric Woerth, minister of budget, and the newly-appointed junior minister of housing, Benoist Apparu, will both be spending their time in the same place; Corsica in the Mediterranean.

And if they're very lucky they could enjoy a tête-à-tête-à-tete with the general secretary of their party ( Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, Union for a Popular Movement,UMP), Xavier Bertrand, who is also scheduled to be staying on “L'île de Beauté” or the island of beauty.

Sarkozy, along with many of his ministers look set to be following the French habit of tending not to travel abroad (90 per cent of them holiday in France). But there is an exception.

The prime minister, François Fillon, will once again travel south to Tuscany in Italy.

Oh well, there's always one, isn't there?

French minister throws a party for his "Facebook friends"

It's a feel-good political story surely guaranteed to warm "les cockles" of any politically hardened cynic's heart brought to you directly from France.

Eric Woerth, France's budget minister - all right so it's not the most glamourous of government jobs by anybody's reckoning - is having a bash this evening.

And not just for anyone as you've probably worked out from the headline.

It's for 200 plus of his "closest" Facebook friends according to the national daily, Le Parisien, and confirmed by a spokeswoman from the ministry's press office on national radio on Tuesday afternoon.

To be precise, Woerth currently has 1,318 people who've signed up as his "friends" and 264 have accepted the invitation to the knees-up at the ministry - the first of its kind here in France.

In fact the story so fascinated one host of a national radio chat show, Laurent Ruquier, that during his show on Tuesday afternoon he actually rang the ministry to find out whether the story was a huge hoax or the truth.

The receptionist who answered his call had the inevitable "fit of the giggles" finding it hard to believe that she was actually live on air, but she was eventually convinced that the show's host was who he said he was and put Ruquier through to the minister's press office.

"Yes the story was true," a spokeswoman confirmed to listeners. "And the get together was being organised by the minister for this very evening."

Asked who would be footing the bill, the spokeswoman said it was all coming out of Woerth's own pocket and not that of the tax payer.

Perhaps that's not so surprising in these days of belt-tightening as although each ministry has an entertainment budget of €200,000 per annum, Woerth had more than a wee bit of diplomatic tongue-biting to do earlier this year when one of his colleagues (Rachida Dati at the justice ministry) admitted that she had already blown two thirds of her department's allowance in just the first three months of this year.

Woerth is not the only minister in the government expected to be present at the "soiree". The labour minister (and possible future prime minister) Xavier Bertrand is also expected to put in an appearance, as is the agriculture minister, Michel Barnier.

And on the glamour side, former Miss France and Miss Europe, Elodie Gossuin is also due to pitch up.

And all that to meet les "amis d'Eric."

Isn't politics wonderful - sometimes?