The Court of Auditors publishes this Monday, July 10 its long-awaited report on the use of private consulting firms by the State. A work carried out in response to a controversy triggered in 2022 by a Senate report on the subject. This report was produced following a consultation carried out by the institution with the French people in the spring of 2022, which brought to light six subjects on which the Court undertook to investigate at the request of citizens.
A second “citizens’ initiative report”, devoted to public support for hunter federations, is to be published later this week. Regarding work on consulting firms, the first president of the Court of Auditors Pierre Moscovici promised in early July a report “up to the expectations it can raise”.
The state’s use of consultants was called a “sprawling phenomenon” by Communist Senators Éliane Assassi and Les Républicains Arnaud Bazin, in a report published in March 2022 a few weeks before the first round of the presidential election. Their work had poisoned the campaign of Emmanuel Macron, singled out for his alleged links with big names in consulting such as the American firm McKinsey.
The government has meanwhile claimed to have cut its spending on strategy and organization consulting by 35% between 2021 and 2022. It has also capped the amount of certain consulting purchases at two million euros and limited the number of contracts awarded. consecutively at the same firm.
In parallel with these efforts, a bill was widely adopted in the Senate in October to better regulate the State’s use of consultants. But it has still not been examined in the National Assembly and therefore does not apply for the moment.
Worried about “inappropriate” uses of these firms at the heart of controversy, the Court of Auditors seizes the subject and called on the State, in its report presented this Monday, July 10, to clarify the rules governing the use of private advisers. The rue Cambon institution called for a “better controlled” practice, following in the footsteps of the Senate report.
The Court notably accuses the State of letting certain private service providers carry out missions falling within the “core business of the administration”, or even of “intervening in the decision-making process”. Practices denounced in March 2022 by Communist Senator Eliane Assassi and her colleague Les Républicains Arnaud Bazin.
Their report, released a few weeks before the presidential election, had embarrassed Emmanuel Macron, singled out for his alleged closeness to big names in consulting, such as the American firm McKinsey.
In the report published on Monday, the Court of Auditors considers that the use of private consultants has tended to become an “easy solution” for an administration with constrained means and deadlines.
The financial magistrates insist: they have no “objection in principle” to the “outsourcing of part of the tasks” of the administration. But this outsourcing must find “a more adjusted and better controlled place among the various instruments of the administrations to carry out their missions”, they judge.
In 2021, services ordered by the State from consultants cost 233.6 million euros, or 0.04% of State expenditure. “These are orders of magnitude much lower than in most comparable countries”, in particular Germany and the United Kingdom, however underlined the first president of the Court of Auditors Pierre Moscovici this Monday, during a conference Press. Still, between 2017 and 2021, state consulting spending tripled.
In her response annexed to the report, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne does not consider it “appropriate to define a finer doctrine for the use of intellectual services at an interministerial level”, the decision having, according to the government, rather to be up to each ministry.
In addition to clarifying its doctrine of the use of consultants, the State must continue its efforts to reinternalize consulting skills and call on its agents “whenever possible”, the Court further recommends. Within the senior civil service, “we have numerous and competent inspection bodies, they must be mobilized more”, argued Monday the president of the 4th chamber of the Court, Christian Charpy.
Within the administration, argues the Prime Minister, “there is not such a large volume of unassigned skills”, in other words idle senior civil servants who could take on advisory missions instead of cabinets.
Two deputies, from the Communist and Renaissance groups, are due to present on Wednesday the conclusions of a fact-finding mission on the scope of the bill, which the presidential majority is considering extending to local communities.
Questioned by AFP, an opposition parliamentarian sees in these debates on the perimeter of the text a delaying tactic of the government. As for the firms themselves, their union Syntec Conseil considers the proposed law “disconnected from reality” and certain provisions unconstitutional.