His findings were eagerly awaited. Renaissance MP Constance Le Grip castigates Russian and Chinese interference in France, in the report of the parliamentary commission of inquiry on the subject. Posted Thursday, June 8, this report had already leaked last week for the part devoted to the National Rally, which Constance Le Grip accuses of having been an “effective transmission belt” of the Kremlin’s discourse. Marine Le Pen immediately castigated a “dishonest” and “politicized” report.
Russia, “main threat”
Beyond the RN, the elected representative of Hauts-de-Seine deciphers the methods of interference in France such as “cyberattacks”, “manipulation of information”, “attacks on scientific heritage” or “recruitment of ‘former officials’.
She makes Russia the “main threat” in this area and points to a “Russianization” of China which, according to her, has “increasingly resorted to aggressive and malicious maneuvers”.
Regarding the “informational war”, the MP asserts, relying on an investigation by the Worldthat there is little doubt of “Russian responsibility” in the 2017 “Macron Leaks” affair, a leak of “nine gigabytes of data relating to Emmanuel Macron’s campaign” posted online on May 5, two days before the second round.
“Naïveté” of certain elites
The MP for the majority is also worried about the “capture” of certain elites, accused of “naivety” or even “connivance” with Russia, with a “tendency” of certain retired senior French officials, “in particular officers of the French army” to “develop in the media a discourse close to the Russian positions”.
For senior civil servants, the rapporteur recommends a stricter “incompatibility” regime for retraining in positions within companies serving foreign states, and the maintenance of a “duty of reserve”.
The elected also recommends stricter rules for the retraining of political figures: the MP calls for “reviewing the rule limiting new professional careers” controlled by the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP), thanks to longer incompatibilities and which could “exclude certain geographical areas”.
She focuses in particular on the case of former Prime Minister François Fillon, passed by two boards of directors of Russian multinationals, left since the war in Ukraine. And on that of Maurice Leroy, former deputy and minister, still in post in the construction development company Mosinzhproekt (MIP), responsible for managing projects in Greater Moscow.
Regarding China, “the most important threat” weighs on French “research and companies”, believes Constance Le Grip. “Chinese infiltration in the academic world and in research laboratories has become an absolutely major point of attention for the French authorities”, she underlines, recommending better protection for French researchers.