Eva Joly

Early life

Born in Grünerløkka, Oslo, she was raised by a tailor father and a hairdresser mother and grew up in what was then a working-class district of inner-city Oslo. She moved to Paris at 20 to work as an au pair. There she married the son of the family that employed her, Pascal Joly (now deceased) and adopted her middle name 'Eva', which is easier to pronounce in French.

Anti-corruption activist

Working as a secretary, Joly took her legal education at night school and became a magistrate when she was 38. Joly specialised in financial affairs, and in 1990 she joined the High Court of Paris (Court of Cassation) as an investigating judge.

Here she quickly made a mark with her crusade against corruption, in particular taking on, among others, former minister Bernard Tapie and the bank Crédit Lyonnais. Her most famous case, however, was that of France's leading oil company – Elf Aquitaine. In the face of death threats, she carried on the case to uncover several cases of fraud, leading to the conviction of tens of persons involved in the oil business. In 2001, she received for this work the award for integrity from the non-governmental organisation Transparency International.

In 2002, Joly was asked by the Norwegian Minister of Justice, Odd Einar Dørum, to accept a three-year position as a special advisor on corruption. The Anti-Corruption and Money Laundering project involved cooperation between the Ministry of Justice and Police, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Norway. The project worked on issues related to financial crimes and organized crime, with a special focus on strong international cooperation. Collaboration with the Ministry of Finance was also important, in addition to strengthening connections to the private sector. The project has among other things led to a Norwegian focus on corruption in foreign affairs. During the three-year period Joly also initiated the Paris Declaration Against Corruption in 2003."The Paris Declaration- A call for action against large scale corruption". Publish What You Pay. Transparency International. 30 June 2003. Retrieved 17 September 2012. 

The 2006 French film L'Ivresse du pouvoir (English title "Comedy of Power") is loosely based on Joly.

In 2009, Joly was employed as a special adviser by the Icelandic government to investigate the possibility that white-collar crime may have played a part in the 2008–2012 Icelandic financial crisis.

On 10 June 2009, Joly was a guest at a popular talk show in Iceland – and implied that she would quit being an advisor to the Icelandic government if they did not do more to help the investigation.

Member of the European Parliament, 2009–present

On 7 June 2009, Joly was elected as a French member of the European Parliament on the Ile de France "Europe Écologie" list, on which she was 2nd to Daniel Cohn-Bendit.

During her first term in Parliament between 2009 and 2014, Joly held the position of chairwoman of the Committee on Development. After the 2014 European elections, Joly joined the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. She later became vice-chairwoman of the Parliament's special committees created to investigate the Luxleaks scandal in 2015 into the Panama Papers scandal in 2016, respectively. Within the Greens–European Free Alliance parliamentary group, she serves as spokesperson on financial policy.

In addition to her committee assignments, Joly is a member of the Parliament’s delegations for relations with Afghanistan and to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean. She previously served as member of the delegation to the ACP–EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly between 2009 and 2014.

Joly also worked in Afghanistan during July 2012 as part of an UN anti-corruption mission.

When Joly filed a lawsuit in December 2015 on behalf of the company’s workers’ council, a preliminary tax inquiry into McDonald's was opened in early 2015. Joly accused the company of understating its earnings to avoid a legal obligation to share profits with employees.

Candidate for President, 2011–2012

In 2011, Joly competed in the primaries of Europe Écologie–The Greens against Nicolas Hulot, Stephane L'Homme and Henri Stoll to represent the merged parties at the president of France in the election of 2012. She was elected in the second round of voting against Hulot, with 58% of votes.

In the first round of the presidential election she received 2.3% of the vote, and subsequently endorsed Socialist Party candidate François Hollande for the second round.

Other activities

Political positions

During her 2012 presidential campaign, Joly called for stopping all nuclear energy production in France by 2020 and deriving 40 percent of the country's energy needs from renewable sources by that date. She also wanted to replace the European Stability and Growth Pact on budget discipline with an Ecological and Social Development Pact, with financial, environmental and social targets.

In addition, Joly promised to increase minimum income benefits by 50 percent, freeze rents for three years and introduce new tax rates of 60 percent for those earning 100,000 euros or more a year and 70 percent for those earning over 500,000 euros. She also demanded a minimum 17 percent corporate tax rate on multinational companies.

Recognition

Controversy

In June 2010, Joly was sent a court summons by Nadine Berthélémy-Dupuis, an investigating magistrate in Paris, following a legal complaint from David Douillet, a national member of parliament from France’s then-ruling UMP party. Douillet alleged that Joly breached France’s defamation laws when she made comments at a public meeting in September 2009 about his banking arrangements.

In November 2011, Joly was criticized for her support of the Green’s deal with the Socialist Party under which they gained safe seats in parliament in exchange for accepting a slow-motion plan to reduce nuclear energy use to 50 percent of electricity generation by 2025.

During her 2012 presidential campaign, Joly led reporters on a tour of sites linked to bad publicity or sleaze allegations around then-president Nicolas Sarkozy. Her tour included a Champs-Élysées nightspot where Sarkozy feted his 2007 victory with millionaire friends, and the home of L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, who is at the centre of an investigation into cash contributions to his 2007 campaign.

Published works

Novel