Author of a study by Contribuables Associés devoted to administrative simplification, economist Sébastien Laye analyzes the government’s “simplification action plan”. He underlines that “this is the first time that Emmanuel Macron, in seven years, has really grasped the scope of the problem, and therefore this new plan goes well beyond that of 2021.
Kernews: What reasons led you to work on this subject of administrative simplification, even though it has been a recurring theme for several decades?
Sébastien Laye: If we look at political and economic history, it’s a fairly old subject, which even began in the 1970s. President Pompidou said: “Stop annoying the French! » He already had the feeling, at the end of the Gaullist era, of an over-administration and over-regulation of French society. About ten years ago, there was a major turning point, with the simplification shocks launched by François Hollande. We have a bit of the impression that Emmanuel Macron, who neglected this during his first mandate, is rediscovering this subject thanks to social crises, which are also normative crises. There were the Yellow Vests, but there were also the farmers who revealed that they were fed up with all these regulations. I published this report for Taxpayers Associated, which is an association which campaigns for economical use of public spending, but I have already had the opportunity to advise politicians on this subject. She’s an Arlesian who keeps coming back. We know that there are sources of value to be found by reducing bureaucracy in French society, so we must find measures. There was the shock of simplification, but I also worked on this subject for several years and I was able to see that the government had launched its own reflections last November. So, this is not a completely new subject in French economic and political history, as on my side.
Doesn’t all this lend credence to the conspiratorial vision according to which senior civil servants do not want to simplify, because it allows them to recruit other technocrats?
This point of view exists. But our vision is that this over-administration of French society is also somewhat our fault because we have asked, over the last forty years, a lot of things from the State and the political class. The simplest way for the political class is to produce standards and spend in order to exist. If the welfare state expands more and more, we even speak of a window state. I like this expression. It is necessary to create the personnel that goes with it, as well as the administrative structures. The political class itself tries to deal with the slightest subject through a law. About twenty years ago, Renaud Denoix de Saint Marc, vice-president of the Council of State, spoke of the verbal logorrhea of the legislator and the talkative law. You have a law which is supposed to govern everything in French society, it’s old, it’s very cultural. It has long been the prerogative of France, including the France of kings, to succeed in producing law. At the beginning, we were recognized for the effectiveness of our law and, as time passed, the welfare state appeared, with multiple aids and bureaucracy, we now have an obese law which collapses in on itself because he is ubiquitous. Look at the reality of the CERFAs to be completed, the procedures for a building permit, or even the public health code… All this is supposed to protect us but, in reality, all this turns against us due to its complexity. I approached this as an economist and there is a cost, since it is estimated that it represents 3 to 3.5% of GDP and that amounts to 60 to 70 billion euros per year.
We often hear small business owners say they want to give up everything because they waste a lot of time on paperwork…
I know this complexity, like several members of my family, but we must also talk about citizens and not just entrepreneurs. In the measures announced by the government, there are things of interest for small businesses, such as the generalization of SME tests. Each time there is a new law, the legislator must ask himself what its impact will be on SMEs. I would have liked us to go lower than the SME level.
But there are always holes in the racket…
There will always be some! We must understand that we will not be able to fight against the extreme bureaucratization of French society as long as we have an obese and omnipresent state in all areas. When we reduce social assistance, with less administrative apparatus, simplification automatically occurs. If your nanny state shrinks, there is obviously less need for standards and bureaucratization. This happened in Canada, around twenty years ago, in Germany, and more recently in the United States with Donald Trump. Then, at the legal level, we recommend taking each sector of the law, trying to define the general principles. The law must define the general principles, but not beyond. Afterwards, it is up to those on the ground to see things according to the situations. We did this for labor law, through the Badinter commission, which mentioned around thirty principles.
If you are overweight, you can try, but there are always temptations and, in the most desperate cases, there is the resort to surgery. We have the feeling that we are in this situation: we set good resolutions, but nothing progresses. Should we go through the revolution in standards, namely surgical intervention?
The French are fed up! Look at the Yellow Vest crisis or the agricultural crisis recently. Emmanuel Macron seems to rediscover this problem. In reality, to use your analogy, you have to eat better and eat less. We must redefine the role of the law, specifying that the law should not intervene in all areas. This would be a real policy of simplification and our neighbors do this very well. In France, we do not ask questions about the law in general, we react sector by sector, by setting priorities on agriculture and housing. So the government is trying to intervene, like firefighters, by creating exemptions and niches. It’s the same thing with taxation, since we create tax loopholes for each company. So, it’s extra paperwork. Not simplification. In agriculture and housing, what poses a problem is the precautionary principle which was constitutionalized in 2005. And this is spreading across all sectors. We try to help farmers with the precautionary principle, by creating exceptions, but this same principle will also hinder people in innovation, telecommunications, artificial intelligence. So we should not deal with this sector by sector. As for the obese state, one can also eat less and that means getting out of the welfare state. This is the hardest thing to do. It is not a policy of simplification, it is simply enough to say that there will be less social assistance and a public service that will be managed differently. Automatically, administrative complexity will be reduced in French society.
Business leaders often say that what bothers them most is not paying, but wasting time…
Yes, but time is money. When you spend several hours on administration, it creates stress, it requires energy, whereas large companies may have lawyers and legal departments. The CEO of a multinational is not going to feel the administrative complexity. The prism of my report focuses mainly on individuals.
Let’s take the example of rental investment: there are always declarations to make, it’s really stressful…
Especially in rental investment, this remains the main use of French savings, but we could also cite the health sector. We have made a lot of progress with dematerialization, this is perhaps the only success we have had in terms of simplification in recent years. We can go further, particularly with artificial intelligence, because it is a way of simplifying administrative complexity. The government was able to announce the abolition of CERFA by 2030, this is normal, because with dematerialization and artificial intelligence, you will always have a CERFA document, but you will never see it. The entry will be made by completing an online form. When we simplify using technologies, it goes faster but, behind that, we do not simplify the law. A right can remain complicated because technology allows us to better understand it but, behind it, there is no real simplification, especially when you integrate a new AI, like “Albert”, which is the one developed by the administration .
Do you have the feeling that there is a real desire on the part of our leaders to move towards simplification? Can we also think that these people do not realize the reality?
The recent announcements from the Attal government are going in the right direction because of the dozen proposals that I make in my report, there are at least three that are taken up as they are, and one or two that are similar. Regarding the real will of our leaders, there are several elements that shock me. I have the impression that Emmanuel Macron is discovering this subject, even though he knew it. Even when he was a minister, nothing particular happened when he arrived in 2017. Then you wake up after a crisis. Generally, when lawmakers wake up from a crisis, it’s not a good job. On this wave of simplification, there is progress on the business side, while for individuals, we are content to react on television sets. I would add that we will not be able to have a real policy of simplification if we do not think about the European dimension and if we do not try to fight against the bureaucracy in Brussels. A large part of the complexity of our law is also what comes from abroad, in particular the international standards that are imposed on us, and our senior officials have fun overtransposing. Finally, we arrive at grotesque situations, like putting the name of the species of fish that we sell on the Marseille market into Latin… Only the French can go to that level! We can wonder about the timing. We react quickly, because there are recriminations, but in general we do not do a good job doing that. I am calling for the establishment of a policy of lasting simplification, because in other countries, this is not something that we rediscover every two years. There is often a simplification council which checks all the laws and which constantly puts pressure on the legislator. This is quite healthy, because the legislator wants to add laws and standards to protect everyone. This is the very essence of politics, they are paid for that, so they must have people against them who encourage them to reduce this complexity. This works very well in Germany or Holland. There is a real political subject, because it is also politicians who produce the standard, and not just senior civil servants.
