Jean-Paul Delevoye, President of the EESC, on 23 January 2012 in Paris. PRM / Sipa

Interview published on Rue 89 on 21 November 2013

In 2011, he diagnosed a France ready to explode. Today, the political and social climate proves him right. And Jean-Paul Delevoye has just divorced the UMP.

Thirty years after his debut in politics, Jean-Paul Delevoye finds himself as on the first day, free of any party. By choosing to support the socialist candidate for the next municipal elections rather than that of his "family", the long-time mayor of Bapaume (Pas-de-Calais) has caused his break with the UMP.

A divorce of which this 66-year-old "social Gaullist" speaks, almost relieved, already quite distant from a party that no longer resembles his good old RPR, proud to go against the current of political codes that he hates.

"I have always said that I have only one master, the general interest and only one ambition, to serve my territory. The only natural leader who can keep this capacity of gathering is the socialist deputy. He has been my vice-president at the intermunicipality for ten years, we have the same project.

The party has its strategy, it is obsessed with winning. I understand it, but we are in divergence. I have no bitterness or rancour, I have always put my convictions and my actions in harmony.

"This is political racism".

Later in the conversation, he becomes more incisive:

"A right-wing member of parliament is told that if he supports a left-wing project, however intelligent, he is a traitor. They want to confine intelligence within political boundaries. Why should we only be tolerant of those who have the same party card? This is political racism.

I always preferred to work with a smart left-wing guy than a dumb right-wing guy. I always said: "Right-wing guys have to be smarter than left-wing guys".

It is a discourse that the man carries well beyond his personal situation. For years, Jean-Paul Delevoye has been virulently diagnosing the crisis in French political life. His position allows him to do so; the days when TV cameras watched his every move are over.

Between 2002 and 2004, he was Raffarin's Minister for the Civil Service, labelled "local endorsement", he the consensual colossus - 1.93 m tall - so Chiracian, who did not enter politics by vocation: while others were preparing their career at the ENA, he was running the family agri-food company.

President of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (Cese) since 2010, this institution which he defines as "the house of long time", he observes the political game with hindsight.

Talking to social workers

Abstention is rising, the parties are losing themselves in personal quarrels, the media are enjoying 'fact-checking' broken promises and false and/or contradictory statements. Politics is tiring, 70% of the French no longer trust the parties (Cevipof 2013 poll), Delevoye is exasperated:

"Politicians are all in the primary, in the conquest, in the conflict of persons."

Despite a busy political career - deputy, senator, president of the Association of French Mayors... - Jean-Paul Delevoye waited until he was sixty to discover French society in depth.

Mediator of the Republic (2004-2011), he examines thousands of complaints and spends time with examining magistrates and social workers, precious witnesses of the country's evolution.

"The verticality of our system means that politicians don't talk to these people, they are locked up in the power cells.

The Marine Le Pen thermometer

In 2011, his last report was a bombshell: he made the terrible diagnosis of a France where nothing is going right anymore. Humiliations are piling up and implosion is looming. Two years later, Delevoye says he is not surprised by the current state of the country. Neither by the series of revolts nor by the rise of the FN.

"When it is the revolt of the hungry or the humiliated, like the Bonnets rouges, it is much more violent and unpredictable because it is not carried by any alternative hope. [...]

Marine Le Pen is the thermometer that gives the temperature of the insufficiency of the republican political offer.

Faced with an increasingly complex situation, the former minister, now head of the Cese, is thinking about solutions, "opening up avenues of reflection", and advocating a cultural shock that has the air of utopia about it: local democracy, an overhaul of the education system, a "society of fulfilment", etc.

At 66 years old, he continues to change his mind: this former member of Parliament is against the accumulation of mandates, this inveterate Gaullist wonders if the Fifth Republic is the ideal system.

But is it really listened to at the top? The Cese is an old institution, often described as useless and a palace of cronyism, where citizens are not used to setting foot for fear of dirtying the beautiful carpets.

Jean-Paul Delevoye assures us that all this is changing, that it is one of the only places where "farmers and ecologists talk about green algae and pesticides".

"The citizen has become a consumer of the Republic

Rue89 In your opinion, politicians no longer seek to convince but to seduce.

Jean-Paul Delevoye: In recent years, with the end of ideologies and the failures of liberalism, power-obsessed politicians have preferred to win voters even if they lose citizens.

The political class has undermined the civic bonds of living together. Throughout society, we observe the rise of individualism, the rejection of a collective project.

The citizen has become a consumer of the Republic: "I don't want the teacher to be good, I want him to give my kid an 'A'; I don't want the judge to be fair, I want him to hurt the person he has hurt. And the politician, I want him to protect my tax niche, my status, etc."

You say that this is the victory of short-termism.

Short-termism is getting worse, whereas it takes time to build convictions. The time frame for political decision-making has become considerably shorter: the five-year term, the Internet... We want everything right away. Politicians are in a posture, in the management of emotion and we are in democracies of emotion.

Any system can be destroyed in a matter of seconds. Andersen with Enron, the most beautiful company in the world, was swept away in three months following a scandal. DSK was irrevocably wiped out by emotional waves that no one could control.

It is the same thing at the economic level: short-term strategies are often taken but are detrimental in the medium term. The strength of German capitalism is the family ownership of the capital, the regional proximity of the savings bank and a proximity to the regional elected representatives.

This short-termism has exacerbated cynicism in the conquest of power. And today, the legitimacy that you acquire through the election does not give you the legitimacy to decide on everything, which gives a premium to the contesting minorities, to the underground and parallel systems.

People no longer believe in respect for the law. They no longer believe in the force of law, they claim the right to force. The weak feel that they have been left out of the system and the revolt of the weak is a violent revolt.

And abstention... The mayor of New York has just been elected with 76% abstention.

Is it also a failure of the political training system: ENA and the senior civil service?

It's not a bad thing to be trained, but nowadays you make a political career. You start at 25, you go into a cabinet and the classic political training means that you have prioritised your political career strategy and not the trust of the citizens.

The length of the political career in relation to a shortened time frame leads to a lack of rotation and does not allow for oxygenation of the system. The political class is no longer a reflection of society. It took laws such as parity to see a new generation emerge.

The lack of political renewal is absolutely pathetic. The French of foreign origin are not given a voice, even though the problem of immigration and integration is a major issue. We need 50 million foreigners by 2050 to balance the active population in Europe. And what strikes me is that more and more MPs are expressing their disappointment at being MPs.

The differences between the right-wing and left-wing offers are narrowing...

People agree on power but not on convictions. The changeover has shown that when you come to power, you do the opposite of what you say in opposition and when you are in opposition, you do the opposite of what you do in the majority.

The tax increase was decided by Fillon and applied by Ayrault. On the intervention in Mali, the opposition asked for a parliamentary debate that it would certainly have condemned in Sarkozy's time and the left is becoming interventionist whereas it is rather pacifist.

The situation is reversed and the public thinks that politicians have no convictions but only postures.

How do you explain the success of the National Front?

In the political landscape today, the most coherent offer is that of the National Front. There is a leader, a party, an organisation.

In the Left Front, there could be coherence but it is complicated by the diversity of the leaders. There could also be coherence on the centre between Bayrou and Borloo around Europe.

But it's clear that the two political parties that are the sickest today because of this lack of coherence, of leaders, of projects and because of personal conflicts are the Socialist Party and the UMP. If this continues, we can only foresee the break-up of the PS and the UMP, and a recomposition of the political offer based on projects.

The real dividing line is no longer between right and left but between those who believe in Europe and those who do not.

Marine Le Pen appears to be the legal and political weapon to overthrow the system. I have always reproached the republican political class for having an almost Judeo-Christian attitude of guilt when they say that it is a sin to vote for Marine Le Pen. They play on the "conscience" of good voters.

Marine Le Pen is the thermometer that gives the temperature of the insufficiency of the republican political offer. The FN vote is not an endorsement of a societal choice, and it is clear from her speeches that it is not coherent, but it is an interesting tool for saying "fuck it" to the traditional political class.

"We are living in a very dangerous political moment".

Does the "tax revolt" surprise you?

For years, there has been a disconnect between economic and social performance: at the heart of all political hopes was the prospect of growth.

The growth rate was seen as the most absolute remedy for the cohesion of society. We can see that the growth rate has increased by 30% in the last ten or fifteen years and we have gone from 1 million to 5 million unemployed. The social model has changed in nature.

Capitalism has lost its best adversary and at the same time it has escaped its masters. It is completely deregulated. There is a perception that society is disoriented because there is no longer a project and, in addition, politicians give the impression, rightly or wrongly, that they no longer have control over their destiny. And feelings become resentments

The tax revolt is not a surprise: as a mediator, I said that there were between 12 and 15 million people who were between 50 and 150 euros per month. It's not the protest against taxes that is striking, it's mainly that for many people, the water is coming up to their chins and the slightest tax increase means that their expenses exceed their resources.

Inequalities are growing. How far will France accept them? It is a painful transition: all the equations of the Republic no longer work. Reality shows the failure of social diversity. Neighbourhoods accumulate all the difficulties, the children of doctors spend their holidays far from the children of workers. There is not a single son of a worker at university.

Our society marches under the theme of equality while systematically putting in place mechanisms of exclusion. The school is a machine for excluding those who do not succeed, the economy is a machine for excluding those who are not productive. More and more of our fellow citizens are in a situation of survival.

What is surprising is that social movements like the Bonnets rouges express themselves outside the traditional institutions.

All the forces that have been emerging recently are indeed spontaneous and outside the organised systems. The Pigeons are outside the Medef, the Bonnets rouges are outside the political and trade union organisations, and the movements protesting against factory closures are often outside the unions.

The system is then in the recovery of popular movements, not in the management of these movements. This is quite revealing. Usually, the revolts of the "spirits", led by the middle classes, are accompanied by an alternative hope.

When there is none, when it is the revolt of the hungry or the humiliated, like the Bonnets rouges, it is much more violent and unpredictable because it is not carried by any alternative hope. It is only fed by despair.

It's the situation of the guy who is drowning and who hits his rescuer. The rescuer doesn't understand, just like the political class today, which tells itself that it is doing what it has to do to save the country. This violence is like a survival reflex: through violence, I exist, and this is perhaps the last step before I no longer exist.

A few years ago, you were already talking about a society in "burn out"...

Our economic system is humiliating people: when you have a seven-year degree and you get a minimum wage, you are not unhappy, you are humiliated. When you are fired at 45 without any alternative, it's the same thing.

The pyramid aspect of society is becoming an hourglass: the elite has the world as its horizon, the middle class is increasingly fragile and the people without hopes are more and more numerous. When you are in this situation of despair and it is the system that puts you there, you have only two solutions: destroy yourself or destroy the system.

I come back to what I was saying: the National Front is the one that offers the legal means to overthrow the system.

You are planning a radical change...

The distribution of wealth is increasingly concentrated in minorities. The twentieth century was the century of human difference, when some races were thought to be superior to others, and it was the century of nationalism.

What we see emerging today is the difference in identities and religions. We see the emergence of conflicts of socio-spatial identity, between neighbourhoods, between ethnic groups, between minorities or between religions. And this will lead to populism.

I remember a report on France 3 which highlighted the rise of Hitler. They had cut the screen in two: on one side, Nuremberg and the enthusiasm of the German population around Hitler; on the other, the German bourgeoisie on the banks of the Rhine, with champagne, gentlemen in dinner jackets and ladies in long dresses.

A bourgeois said: "This little postman will never have power.

You diagnose an absolutely terrible crisis....

We are not in crisis, we are in metamorphosis. And as always, in these cases, destruction precedes construction and pain precedes hope.

We are living in a politically very dangerous moment and all the more dangerous if there is political blindness.

Tomorrow's society will have nothing to do with today's. We are going to enter a phase of low growth and a whole series of things will have to be revisited. We will not be able to finance retirement and health care from work.

We should open up republican workshops between the opposition and the majority, between employees and employers, to say what kind of social contract we want to put in place. On health, on retirement.

On pensions, more than the length of the contribution period and the extension of the duration, we must question the distribution system: those who work do not all want to pay for the elderly when they are not sure to benefit from the system.

If we are not careful, this lack of credit will fuel the collective pact that is France's strength. The young will no longer want to pay for the old, those who work for those who are unemployed and the healthy for those who are ill.

Because of a refusal to anticipate or because of the networks that block us - we are a country locked in by corporatism - we find it difficult to imagine adapting our system. We are asking the future to adapt to our system when it is the system that should adapt to the future.

In what other area is it obvious?

Education, for example. We have educational failures, but no one imagines that the arrival of the Internet will completely change the relationship between the teacher and the student. We can no longer force people to learn, we have to like learning and today it is no longer the accumulation of knowledge - we have it on computers - that counts but the formation of a critical sense.

Young people need us to develop values, critical thinking and convictions.

"We are going to move from a society of performance to a society of fulfilment".

How do you see the future of our social system?

Our social system, which was based on benefits, needs to be rethought with a view to socialisation. People need to rediscover the desire to sing, dance and drink together. Human relations are not only linked to money but also to empathy and sharing. I am convinced that we will move from a society of performance to a society of fulfilment.

The question is: how to be fulfilled with less money? We need to move to a sharing society: sharing a flat, carpooling, sharing nurses... We need to move from a society of goods to a society of links.

Economic variations are becoming more and more pronounced. We may see people who are billionaires at 16 or 18 and ruined two years later. We must succeed in stabilising the social pathway despite the increasingly strong economic variations.

And from a political point of view, what would be the solutions?

Political decisions taken by the organisation were immediately challenged by the emergence of citizen forces. We can see it with taxation: the law is voted, the Pigeons express themselves, basta. The Bonnets rouges expressed themselves: plan for Brittany, suspension of the ecotax voted by previous governments.

The strength is no longer in the political institutions but in the citizen forces. The authorities are right to be attentive to this. We need to consider a new political method: finding a way to include the voice of citizens so that it is not only contentious and destructive.

We have seen employees form Scops and save companies that had been put into bankruptcy by pension funds that were only looking for maximum profitability. We have the same hiatus with the political class. Citizens are not against politics, there have never been so many political expectations. We are not suffering from an excess of politics but from an excess of politicians.

We must also stop seeing trade unions as obstacles to change, but as agents of change. The employers are not systematically thirsty for money. We have set up a scene that pleases the person who set it up, but that does not reflect reality. I have never seen so many employees and bosses marching together to save their company.

There are more and more opportunities to bring people together around communities of interest, which requires challenging a system that is built only on a dominant/dominated power relationship and on the enjoyment of power.

In the short term, how can the lack of political renewal be addressed?

Above all, I believe that today, public opinion no longer tolerates the accumulation of mandates in the name of "they make a career for themselves and not for me". There is a price to pay for restoring trust. As well as total transparency.

For you, the solution is local.

Power is already going local. The national anaemia will be reinforced by local forces. The forces of the territory must be released. There is local optimism but national pessimism.

France is a very hierarchical, very vertical country. It does not know how to be enriched by its diversity, it is obsessed by its unity of power and decision: the central administration is suspicious of the local administration.

In a company, we are constantly looking for the best skills, whereas in politics, when we see a competitor emerging, we tend to want to eliminate him. We tear each other apart rather than bring people together because of the strategies for gaining power.

Perhaps one of the ways of relieving the tension in human relations is to represent the various citizen forces in institutional bodies. Perhaps we should set up eight or nine metropolitan regions around Lille, Marseille and Bordeaux, and not have this jumble of departments, regions, inter-communities, town halls...

People see the tax bill and not the ability to influence decisions. People need to be offered meeting places for culture, sport and even spirituality. People are looking for alternative hopes. People need to believe in something. And it is on the territory of town halls and communities of communes that social vitality can be found.

In Lyon, people on the right vote for Collomb; in Bordeaux, people on the left vote for Juppé. Power is already moving to the local level.

In concrete terms, how can things be changed?

We need a culture shock. My dream would be to create republican work sites that would allow us to move forward without the conquests of power. "Right, left, employers, employees: what is the taxation of tomorrow? The same goes for health and unemployment.

By asking real questions: are we convinced that 100% people can get jobs? We have the right to think not and to set up allowances so that people can work for the community. My obsession is to revisit the equations of the Republic.

France's creative genius must be released. If we restored confidence in this country, it would do great things.