Stanislas Guerini, minister since May 20 in the government of Elisabeth Borne, will not be able to deal with files related to Alphabet (Google) or the clouds French sovereign due to a risk of conflict of interest.
It’s an unfortunate portfolio reduction. As spotted by one of our colleagues, the new Minister of Transformation and Public Service, Stanislas Guerini, does not have the right to manage files concerning Alphabet (Google) as well as “cloud hosting of state data”. And for good reason: his wife, Marie-Luce Conrard, works for Google Cloud France. Thus, the government issued a decree formalizing its exclusion from these files.
“The Minister of Transformation and the Public Service is not aware of acts of any kind relating to the company Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiaries as well as acts relating to the cloud hosting of State datacan we read in the decree published on June 7, 2022. In accordance with article 2-1 of the aforementioned decree of January 22, 1959, the corresponding powers are exercised by the Prime Minister.. Concretely, the processing of these files is now the responsibility of Elisabeth Borne. And this decree applies until the functions of the Minister of Transformation and Public Service are terminated.
The new Minister of Transformation and the Public Service, Stanislas Guérini, does not have the right to manage files concerning Alphabet (Google) as well as “cloud hosting of state data”.
The reason ? His wife works for Google Cloud France. pic.twitter.com/ougQfhJ2O4
— Nicolas Berrod (@nicolasberrod) June 8, 2022
This information concerning the position of Stanislas Guerini’s wife appears in the file dedicated to him on the site of the High Authority for the transparency of public life. It has not been specified whether the minister himself withdrew from these files or whether it was reading the file that led the government to dismiss him. This withdrawal is in any case supposed to guarantee the absence of future conflicts of interest.