Ministerial spending on strategy and organization consulting fell nearly 35% in 2022 compared to the previous year, much better than the initial target of a 15% drop, Civil Service Minister Stanislas Guerini told AFP on Friday. .
After reaching 271 million euros in 2021, this expenditure on external consulting with private companies fell to 176.8 million euros, according to government figures. In a circular published in January 2022, former Prime Minister Jean Castex had wanted this specific type of spending to be cut by 15% for the current year.
The rate of reduction in spending is “twice as fast as the objectives we had set ourselves”, greeted Stanislas Guerini. “The impulse given by the President of the Government has been followed in all the ministries with greater rigor”. The government publishes these figures almost a year after the publication of a Senate report that had described as “extensive” the phenomenon of recourse by the State and its operators (Pôle emploi, CNRS, France Skills…) to the cabinets of advice.
900 million euros spent on consulting in 2022
In their report published in March 2022, senators Arnaud Bazin (Les Républicains) and Eliane Assassi (a communist-majority CRCE group) had estimated the ministries’ spending on consulting in 2021 at around 900 million euros, half of this amount earmarked for consultancy. expenses with a strong strategic component (445.6 million euros).
To justify the difference between the 445.6 million advanced by the senators and the 271 million advanced by the government for the year 2021, the Ministry of Public Administration explains that its calculation is limited to expenses passed by agreement -executive of the Interministerial Directorate for Public Transformation (DITP), a more restricted scope than that chosen by parliamentarians. The rest is mainly related to IT services and military contracts.
Faced with the controversy arising from the Senate report, the Government presented in July new rules for the use of consulting firms through this DITP framework agreement, applicable as of Monday. In particular, they limit the amount of services to two million euros and limit the number of consecutive services provided by private companies on behalf of the State to two, in addition to reinforcing the ethical and transparency obligations for consultants.
But the contracts signed through the DITP represent only a small part of the Council of State’s total spending, lamented the senators, who approved a bill in the fall largely inspired by the recommendations of the March report. More than three months after its approval by the Upper House, it has still not been examined by the National Assembly.
Source: BFM TV
