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Federal government has paid more than a billion for external consultants since 2017

2021-09-23T11:42:00.668Z


You can't know everything, not even as a politician. Now a request from the left showed: Since the last federal election, the governing consultations from outside have made a lot of money.


Enlarge image

The members of the Federal Cabinet at a joint meeting in the Chancellery

Photo: Bernd von Jutrczenka / DPA

How much does good advice cost?

In any case, the federal government has spent more than a billion euros on external expertise since 2017.

This emerges from a response from the Ministry of Finance to a request from left-wing MP Matthias Höhn, which is available to the German Press Agency.

Leading the way in investing in outside expertise

  • the

    Ministry of

    the

    Interior

    with at least 492.9 million euros,

  • the

    Ministry of Transport

    with 196.9 million euros

  • and the

    Ministry of Finance

    with 121.7 million euros.

Savings were made in the Ministry of Labor

Höhn asked the government about the expenditure for external advisory and support services from the beginning of the election period on October 24, 2017 to July 31, 2021. In some cases, however, the information from the individual ministries includes the whole of 2017. This is the case with the Ministry of Transport, for example. The Ministry of Labor reported the lowest expenditure for external expertise with 2.5 million euros and the Chancellery with 3.3 million euros. The bottom line is that at least 1.073 billion euros have been spent on external support since 2017.

The involvement of business consultants and other external experts by the federal government is highly controversial. Critics say that buying expertise is too expensive and, given the thousands of employees in the ministries, not absolutely necessary. In addition, it is feared that it will have too great an impact on government work. Proponents, on the other hand, expect added value in a wide variety of areas through an outside perspective or use experts for special tasks that do not require permanent employees. This can apply to tasks in the IT area, for example.

Höhn attested that the government of the Union and the SPD had a “devastating balance sheet” in terms of consultant spending at the end of the legislative period.

"The next federal government must finally create complete transparency about the activities of these companies in the ministries and authorities and massively reduce their influence on political decision-making processes," he demanded.

The Federal Audit Office had already criticized wastage in the commissioning of consultants by the government on several occasions.

muk / dpa

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-09-23

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