“Particular caution must be observed in the choice of its customers or companies”, in particular in the “city, housing, agriculture or food sectors”, indicates the authority.
The High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP) has expressed a number of reservations regarding the retraining of the former Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie, who will join a start-up and create his own consulting company. “Particular caution must therefore be observed by Mr. Denormandie in the choice of his clients or the companies in which he would take a stake, especially if these belong to the sectors of the city, housing, agriculture or food.“, she says in a decision of August 30, made public on Monday.
The former minister, who held three positions in the government related to these themes during Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term, wishes “create a company to provide consulting services and take equity stakes in other companies“, announces the HATVP. Julien Denormandie was also recently named “impact directorfrom start-up Sweep, which helps companies like Saint-Gobain and JCDecaux measure and reduce their carbon emissions.
An “ethical risk”
Regarding his consulting company, the risk of illegal taking of interests “cannot be excluded“, Points out the High Authority. It asks him to refrain, among other things, from taking any stake in a company which he was responsible for ensuring the control, monitoring, or with which he had entered into a contract as part of his duties for the previous three years. The former minister is also invited to seize this independent administrative authority “before taking on an organization as a client or taking a stake in a company» related to housing or agriculture in the next three years.
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The HATVP raises, on the other hand, a “ethical risk“if his company”performed services on behalf of the administrations over which he had authority or at his disposal“. Furthermore, “it cannot be excluded that Mr. Denormandie takes steps (…) with officials and public officials with whom he worked during the exercise of his governmental functions“, she adds.
He is therefore asked to refrain fromperform any serviceon behalf of his former services for three years and to take steps with members of the government who were in office at the same time as him, as well as with members of his former cabinets. Close collaborator of Emmanuel Macron since his first electoral campaign, Julien Denormandie, 42, left the government in May 2022.