Public aid to businesses: according to Senator Olivier Rietmann, it has "never been evaluated, never accounted for"

Fabien Gay, a Communist senator from Seine-Saint-Denis, and Olivier Rietmann, a Republican senator from Haute-Saône, are from opposing political sides. They signed the parliamentary report, the result of a six-month investigation into state aid to businesses . Both interviewed leading business leaders and senior civil servants. According to the report, €211 billion in state aid was granted. "The administration had no precise definition of what state aid should be. We didn't know the amounts or the number of schemes," recalls Fabien Gay.

How can we explain that the State does not know what is coming out of its coffers for businesses? "The State has the means to do it, but it does not do it because it is not the priority at the moment," assures Olivier Rietmann. And the senator adds that there are 2,252 aid schemes for businesses. "This means that for years, the response to any problem [...] has been a scheme with money on the table, never evaluated, never counted [...] because we have never put in place evaluation schemes," he explains.

Watch the full interview in the video above.