Karine Le Marchand gives up her controversial subsidy to the Paca region – The HuffPost

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Ludovic Marin / Pool / Reuters

Faced with the controversy, Karine Le Marchand finally decided to give up the grant application she had made to the Paca region to renovate in an eco-responsible way and very highlighted a Provencal farmhouse (archive photo taken at Paris in February 2019).

POLICY – “There you go, everyone’s happy!” Since last October 22, the host Karine Le Marchand finds herself at the heart of a “bad buzz on social networks”, as she describes it herself. In question, a subsidy of nearly 120,000 euros that she would have liked to receive from the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region and which she ended up giving up.

Everything goes, last Friday therefore, an article from the media Marsactu which reveals an astonishing affair: the famous presenter of “Love is in the meadow” and of “An intimate ambition”Submitted during the summer a grant application to the Paca region to renovate in an eco-responsible way the farmhouse it owns in Aix-en-Provence. Help required through its audiovisual production and communication company, Potiche Prod, which could have given rise – both the region and the interested party admit – to a follow-up on social networks, or even to a television program. M6.

However, beyond the particularly large sums mentioned here, to believe the experts, it is this last point that poses a problem. Several elected environmentalists wondered whether it was actually a communication operation on the part of Karine Le Marchand, she who has already accepted a post of ambassador for the Paca region, in particular by using her liabilities with “Love and in the meadow” to embody a communication campaign praising the action of regional authorities towards local farmers.

“Embezzlement of public funds for personal gain”

“The renovation of this home will make it possible to test technologies linked to eco-responsibility and to follow the stages of renovation of a single-family house. It will be a guide to allow individuals to know the aid to which they can claim, ”defended the region, which should have voted for the subsidy on Thursday 28.

An attitude that had therefore made the Greens scream, the local spokesperson for EELV Nathalie Morand in the lead. “This ecology people and above ground has ecology only the facade. In reality, it is an embezzlement of public funds for personal ends: Love is in the gain! ” And Renaud Muselier, LR president of the Paca region to reply by evoking a “defamatory” projection and assuring that the host did not benefit from any privilege.

The fact remains that the person concerned was scalded by the controversy. This Monday, October 25, she posted on social networks a video reacting to this “bad buzz”, explaining giving up her grant application, in an “ego-responsible” gesture, as she says in the description of her publication. “As I see that I am used by journalists or political parties, the thing will be quite simple: I will not make the request.”

Before reaching this conclusion, the host of M6 nevertheless denies having wanted to take advantage of the system.

Still an ambassador?

“Since 2018, there has been an intervention framework called ‘exemplary building’ and which offers to help any eco-responsible house project. You and I can claim it, but that requires a lot of things: take an architect ‘environmental quality’, a design office and obviously do things according to the rules of the art … ”, explains- she. It adds that therefore resorting to such a subsidy would amount to spending “a lot of money, well beyond the subsidy of course”.

But faced with the scale of the controversy, Karine Le Marchand claims to have taken the decision to withdraw her request. “In return, I will not be obliged to do everything that was requested, the design office and all that, and I will manage like a grown-up, continue to do my little project without the support of the South region. And there you have it, everyone is happy! ”

Contacted by our colleagues from nice morning, Karine Le Marchand, however, did not answer a major question: is she also giving up her mission as ambassador for which she was to be paid? This is no doubt a sign that the controversy is not quite extinct.

See also on the HuffPost: Karine Le Marchand helps singles find love via Instagram lives