The Court of Auditors confirms the abuses of the use of consulting firms under the Macron presidency

2023-07-10 11:00:12
Aurelia

Increasing expenses and breaches of the rules in force. “The State has not put itself in a position to conduct a coherent and controlled policy” recourse to consulting firms, criticizes the Court of Auditors, in a report published Monday, July 10, which is based, among other things, on the control of a hundred markets from 2019 to 2022. In broad outline, the institution confirms the conclusions of the Senate commission of inquiry, which had disrupted Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign in the spring of 2022, and calls on the government to rectify the situation in the years to come.

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First of all, there are the figures: the State’s expenditure on intellectual services has increased sharply over the past ten years. From around 11 million euros in 2014, they rose to 103 million in 2018, then to 200 million euros in 2022 – without even counting IT expenses.

If these sums represent only a part “minimum” of public expenditure – 0.25% of the State’s operating budget – the pretext of the health crisis, used by the government to justify this increase, did not convince the authors. “The investigation reveals that no overall explanation” and consistent was provided to this rise in the bill, which was, “at best, observed”, but surely not decided, anticipated or even explained a posteriori. The fault, in particular, of budgetary data “mediocre”, which still prevent accurate monitoring of these advisory services. Thus, the Ministries of National Education and Ecology have been in the“incapacity” to submit to the Court the list of their contracts with consulting firms.

Intrusion into the very heart of State missions

The Court of Auditors concedes that legitimate reasons can justify outsourcing, such as the absence of skills or resources within the State. But very often the consultants “carry out tasks which could or should be performed – save in exceptional circumstances – by public officials”is deplored in the report, which lists many examples.

Thus, in 2018, the Ministry of National Education entrusted the reorganization of the general direction of school education to two consulting firms, EY and Boston Consulting Group, while this service would have had “natural vocation” to return to the General Inspectorate of the Ministry. For its part, the Ministry of the Interior has outsourced the automated control of speed cameras, which represents a quarter of its non-IT consulting services, when it comes to “State missions now permanent”. Similarly, the Environment and Energy Management Agency has greatly increased its use of consulting firms to support the deployment of the recovery plan, for which it provides 25% of the credits, while This is’“heavy actions that would require the availability of specialists” within the state. “It is not normal to see consulting firms taking on such functions”believes Pierre Moscovici, first president of the Court of Auditors.

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