At the institutional level, I agree with my colleagues. I think all governments are in a conflict of interest when the time comes to define their legislation. We do not have a major reference point because all public office holders across the world take advantage of their situation to weaken the legislation that governs them. So we would have to turn more to international organizations for solutions. In terms of broader personal interests, we have to think about so-called “factual situations”.
For instance, community networks, association networks and interest groups could benefit from decisions in their favour as a result of belonging to the public office holder's local network. In that case, it is not a question of personal interests, but rather of the influence of the public office holder's local network, which will go well beyond their traditional private sphere as set out in the legislation, meaning their children, spouse and their immediate network. So it is the broadening of their network.
Debates often deal with political parties, friendship networks, association networks and interest group networks. At that point, situations come up, where we can often see that those expanded local networks received interesting favours. The idea is that favouring the interests of these local networks goes against the public interest.
In the present debate, we are talking about conflicts of interest. We must never forget that, in public life, conflict of interest means acting against the public interest to serve a personal interest. So a public decision is not made for the common good, but rather to serve a personal interest. That is the essence of the debate.
I said that this should be made clear in the preamble of the legislation. At all times, a public decision is always used as an indicator to assess whether there is a conflict of interest or not. The decision is made to promote the common good and the public interest, not to serve all kinds of personal interests. I think that we are reviewing the logic of the legislation in part by broadening this dimension.