The sea serpent of enterprise support conditionality resurfaces | EUROtoday

Each social plan raises its share of questions, and amongst them, one query isn’t lacking: what has the corporate completed with the general public support it has acquired up to now? Following the announcement of the closure of the 2 Michelin websites in Vannes and Cholet (Maine-et-Loire), the Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, declared, in an interview with West France revealed on November 14, having requested a “audit” support paid to the commercial group.

“Michelin is not the only one concernedadded the head of the executive. We are in the process of asking all companies that have received public money, particularly to overcome the Covid and expensive energy crises, to tell us what they have done with it. » An approach approved, a few days later, by the general secretary of the CFDT, Marylise Léon, in the columns of World. This even goes so far as to estimate that a lack of transparency on the part of business leaders should lead the administration not to “not give the green light to the social plan they present”, and even to “consider reimbursement of the subsidies granted”.

Will these phrases be adopted up this time? Because, because the Nineteen Eighties and the waves of deindustrialization, requires larger transparency on public support have systematically fallen into the void, whereas assist measures have multiplied.

“At least 160 billion euros per year”

In spring 2020, in the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and “whatever it takes”, the Vosges deputy Stéphane Viry (varied proper) led a joint info mission on the conditionality of public support to companies. A report emerged in March 2021 containing a dozen proposals, aimed toward higher defining the goals of public support, their traceability, and establishing management mechanisms and even sanctions. Three years later, the outcomes are meager. “No action was taken” to this work, underlines immediately with a bit of bitterness Mr. Viry.

However, the quantities concerned are appreciable. According to the work of the Lille Center for Sociological and Economic Studies and Research, all support benefiting companies (reductions in social safety contributions, direct State support, tax support, support from native authorities) represents “at least 160 billion euros per year”. “Three times the amount of corporate tax”underlines Laurent Cordonnier, professor of economics on the University of Lille, among the many authors of this work.

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