A huit mois de la présidentielle, les comptes de campagne déjà sous surveillance

Moult months before the presidential election, campaign accounts are already under scrutiny. At the secure offices on Rue de la Fédération in Paris, where shelves overflow with campaign papers and invoices, the atmosphere has shifted. The race for 2027 has now begun for the National Commission on Campaign Accounts and Political Financing (CNCCFP), on the front lines of a major election.

"We are being solicited by campaign teams," President Christian Charpy of the independent authority tells POLITICO. He plans to gather all representatives of the candidates as soon as the list of personalities on the starting line is known. While election expenses have been considered since spring, a year before the vote, the staff want to ensure they are on the up-and-up, to avoid seeing their champion's accounts probed by Charpy and his auditors.

"Many questions revolve around the use of social networks and their registration in the accounts," reports former magistrate Christian Charpy from the National Employment Employment Agency. Just two days ago, the Commission responded to Renaissance, Gabriel Attal's party, seeking clarification on the status of interviews with content creators.

"Freedom of expression, opinion, information exists. It's complicated to criminalize a influencer who does a podcast with a candidate, if there is no financial counterpart," said the senior official. Conversely, if the content creator is paid to conduct an interview, the operation must be charged in the expenses. Such a transaction will be prohibited from October 1st, the day when political advertising is banned.

Prevention... and verifications Another sign of a new era, amid fears of foreign interference: candidates are urged to show "extreme vigilance" about the origin of the funds that make campaigns possible. For donations to candidates, they must come from people residing in France or of French nationality. Bank loans can only come from a bank located in the European Economic Area.

Charpy will have particular vigilance on the origin of private loans, which are an additional way to finance oneself alongside donations or party resources. "Is the lender real, or are they a fake lender? That's a question that may arise," he points out. In case of doubt, the watchdog of campaign accounts will refer to the financial intelligence service Tracfin to trace the origin of questionable funds, or dialogue with Viginum, the state agency responsible for combating digital interference, in case of a destabilizing operation "characterized" as such.

During the last municipal elections, two LFI candidates were the target of a sophisticated external attack. The subject is even more sensitive as some formations, like the RN, have trouble finding a loan. And this, at a time when the Matignon initiative to create a "bank pool" to avoid this situation has been abandoned, as POLITICO revealed.

"Not respecting the rules is taking risks" The 2027 runoff will also be marked by a final novelty: the digitization of supporting documents and invoices. They will soon be able to be directly deposited on a website. "We will be able to easily cross-reference files," Charpy points out. For example, to compare costs between meetings that hosted the same number of people for different candidates.

This will be useful to ask if there has been overcharging or under-reporting. The last time the CNCCFP pulled the nuclear card was in 2012, when Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign accounts were completely rejected. A rare case, but one that everyone keeps in mind. "Not respecting the rules is taking considerable risks," says the man who took his post last year.

To avoid any interference or interference, the Commission has even planned to rent additional space at its Paris headquarters to welcome all auditors on site when it will be necessary, after the vote, to subject the entire expense of candidates to the microscope. A precaution that says a lot about the threats hanging over the supreme election.