IIt was a close call for the adoption of the status of mission company to be imposed on groups of private accommodation establishments for dependent elderly people (Ehpad).
First voted by the National Assembly on November 21, 2023 on the proposal of MP Annie Vidal (Renaissance), this provision was subsequently abandoned by the joint committee which met on March 12 to finalize the “aging well” law, definitively voted on March 27. It was chosen to preserve the “voluntary framework” of the adoption of the status of mission company, which would, for some, guarantee greater accountability of stakeholders and a more authentic approach.
This non-publicized parliamentary debate is, however, worthy of interest because it raised a crucial question, that of the specificities of the economy of life and the forms of business which must be developed there. “The economy of life”to use the title of the book by Jacques Attali (Fayard, 2020), brings together all the sectors which, in one way or another and directly or indirectly, give themselves the mission of defending life: health , food, water, energy, but also education, culture, insurance…
Many examples show that society no longer tolerates these sectors destroying what they are supposed to protect. How can we accept that intensive agriculture has excessive harm to biodiversity, carbon storage in the soil and sometimes directly to our health? How can we accept that the health and medico-social sector reifies its employees to the point of creating major psychosocial problems and aggravating the risks of mistreatment?
Different management logics
It is time to formalize the fact that companies in these sectors should no longer be managed solely for the benefit of their shareholders. We can demand that they have a positive impact on the quality of life at work of their employees, on the health of their customers and on natural ecosystems. We would emerge from a paradoxical situation where companies, on the one hand, help us to live, and on the other hand, damage living things, while generating costs that the community is responsible for assuming: public health problems , environmental crises…
It is precisely to respond to this challenge that the status of mission company was established in 2019 by the Pacte law. [Plan d’action pour la croissance et la transformation des entreprises] and already adopted by more than 1,500 companies. The latter modify their statutes to include a mission, that is to say a reason for being, as well as social and environmental objectives that they undertake to pursue. Monitoring of the execution of this mission is carried out continuously by a “mission committee”, a new governance body representing the parties affected by the company’s activity (employees, customers, environment, etc.), and by an organization independent third party, which is similar to an auditor for extra-financial commitments.
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