The Court of Accounts advocates this Monday for the State to return a “better controlled” place to private consulting missions, the use of which has sometimes been “inappropriate” in recent years, in its first report prepared at the request of citizens. However, they ask for clarification on the use of consultants, which has become an “easy fix” for an administration with limited time and resources.
Practices denounced in March 2022 by the communist senator Eliane Assassi and her colleague Les Républicains Arnaud Bazin. In a report released a few weeks before the first round of the presidential election, they described the administration’s use of consulting firms as a “spreading phenomenon.”
The issue had put Emmanuel Macron’s teams in trouble, noted for his alleged closeness to big names in consulting such as the American firm McKinsey. Consulted in the spring of 2022 by the rue Cambon institution, French citizens had asked the Court of Auditors to investigate, among five other issues, the use of the State for cabinets. A matter of public interest, therefore, but which represents only 0.04% of state spending in 2022, according to the Court.
Costs that have tripled between 2017 and 2021
“The outsourcing of part of the tasks of the administrations does not deserve objection in principle,” write the financial magistrates. The administration consulting costs, however, “triplicated between 2017 and 2021”, reaching 233.6 million euros that year (excluding IT services), is worrying.
A January 2022 government circular has certainly made “significant improvements” to the doctrine of recourse to consulting firms. But it was taken “under the pressure of current events” and must be imperatively “completed” by the judge of the Court. This recommendation could find a political translation in a bill approved in the Senate in October, which reinforces the supervision of consultancy purchases. But it is still waiting to be examined by the National Assembly.
Pending a possible inclusion of the text on the agenda, two deputies from the Communist and Renaissance groups must publish this Wednesday a report on the scope of the text voted on in the Senate.
Source: BFM TV
