Beyond the problem posed by the American nationality of the interested party, the psychodrama around the appointment of Fiona Scott Morton to the Directorate-General for Competition of the European Union comes to put a coin in the machine to wonder about the acceptability of hybrid careers, made of round trips between the public sector and the private sector. This specialist in the regulation of Gafam served in the fight against anti-competitive practices in state administrations, then worked for large tech companies. Is this type of profile really reasonable from the point of view of possible conflicts of interest – hear: benefits that could now be granted to former clients? Some think not. There are especially many who will let their a priori hatred of these half-times played in each camp speak more or less openly, will sing the grandeur of the lives dedicated to public service without eclipse or slipper, will curse money and denounce the mixing of genres as a germ of putrefaction.
I think that, in general, we should listen to them less, and agree to see the collective interest that can attach to these heterodox careers. Still not easy. France has become phobic about this. There are countless rules and devices intended to thwart the zigzag – High Authority for the transparency of public life in mind. At this rate, with the help of the discouragement of the elites, the senior civil service will soon be populated by “pure” and “pure” people only. It won’t be for the best.
Let us advance that no valid public action will ever arise from a closed mind, ill-informed, turned in on itself, closed to the complexity of things and maintained in its closure by the exclusive association of its fellows. Let us also take for granted that experience, inner knowledge of the problems and of the people who experience them remains the best available vaccine against the scholastic illusion, as Bourdieu said, which encourages us to lodge the truth in abstract categories only, prevents to doubt it and encourages those who think they know but do not understand to make big mistakes.
A country sick with its technocracy
France is at odds with reality, the facts, the truth. And she does everything to aggravate the trait. The sister phobia – that of lobbying – shows this well. By dint of putting parliamentarians under glass in order to immunize them against any external contamination, information coming from companies or sectors of activity that Parliament wants to regulate has been made suspect in principle; as if the addressees of the laws had nothing useful to say about the effects they will have on them. One will be astonished, afterwards, not to have seen coming the trouble which one thus caused by voluntary obtusion, but nobody will draw the consequences from it.
There is no martingale or guarantee; only more or less high probabilities of entrusting the right responsibilities to the right people. But since there is always a risk in selecting them, it is better to take it on the basis most useful to the general interest, namely: competence, experience, proven knowledge, prudence acquired in contact with reality and a minimum of benevolence towards the intentions of those who like to change jobs…
It is fortunate to be able to have men or women who know what they are talking about, because they have seen the problems from all sides and thus perceived for good the diversity and even the legitimacy of the interests at stake. made, in England, excellent judges with former lawyers; probably even among the best. We have kept, in France, great servants of the State among those who have ceased, temporarily or not, to remain its employees. It is madness to want to destroy this wealth. Especially since it’s useless. Nobody has ever demonstrated that the accumulation of procedures of frustration and preventive control imposed in the name of virtue and transparency had objectively reduced the number of serious criminal conducts, where lies, on second thought, the only subject who is worth.
France, which castigates its technocracy, deploys mad energy in entrusting its destiny only to perfect technocrats. There must be a mistake…
* Denys de Béchillon is a constitutional expert and professor of law at the University of Pau