French President Emmanuel Macron is being accused of having brokered a secret deal to ease Uber's arrival into the country and opposition politicians are asking for him to explain what happened.

Dubbed the "Uber files" the alleged documents including text messages have been leaked to 42 international newspapers. 

It is claimed that Macron facilitated Uber's arrival in France in, 2014, via secret meetings and backroom deals.

The opposition in France called for the president to explain himself. Far-left MP Alexis Corbière says he is considering the creation of a Parliamentary inquiry commission to look into the matter.

The leader of Macron's party in the lower house, Aurore Bergé, reacted ironically to calls for an investigation.

"It's great, a country that is offended that a minister of the economy meets business leaders. Fortunately, he was doing his job," she said on Monday.

In 2014, when the now-president was the economy minister, he is said to have told Uber executives that he had brokered a secret "deal".

This agreement, it is claimed, would support Uber's main bid to disrupt the French taxi sector as long as Uber discontinued its UberPOP service - an attempt by the U.S. start-up to bring in unregulated ride-sharing.

At the time as Uber was attempting to enter the French market, there were some violent protests and demonstrations by taxi drivers.

Macron was in the cabinet as France's economy and industry minister.

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He appears to have been on first-name terms with Uber's controversial boss Travis Kalanick but Macron, who would three years later become French president, did not record all his in-person meetings with Kalanick.

Only one of the four meetings revealed by the leak, in Davos in January 2016, seems ever to have been made public. The UK's Guardian  website says Uber's former lobbyist Mark MacGann has identified himself as the leaker and quotes him as saying:   "For a lobbyist, Davos is a wonderful competitive advantage that only money can buy.

"Politicians don't have a retinue of advisers and civil servants hanging around taking notes.”

During the two years he served as economy minister, Macron was open about his ambitions to try to open up France's labour market by tabling a pro-business deregulation bill to try to boost "growth and economic activity."

A spokesperson for the current president said that in 2014 Macron was "automatically led to meet with many companies engaged in the profound change in services that occurred during the years mentioned, that it was necessary to facilitate by unraveling certain administrative or regulatory locks."