Senators take action.
A few months after the publication of a widely commented report on the “sprawling” influence of consulting firms on the state, the elected representatives of the upper house will study, in mid-October, a bill “
framing the intervention
” of these structures in public policies, we learned on Wednesday.
Carried by the former presidents and rapporteur of the Senate inquiry commission on the influence of consulting firms, Arnaud Bazin (LR) and Éliane Assassi (CRCE), the text, tabled in June, is also signed by elected officials from several sides, such as Nathalie Goulet (Centrist Union), Valérie Boyer (LR), Jean-Pierre Corbisez (RDSE) or Franck Montaugé (Socialist, ecologist and republican).
It aims to respond to several problems raised by the commission of inquiry, including
the "opacity
" around these questions or the "
uncontrolled expansion
" of missions, the senators having been surprised by the massive use of cabinets by the State and its operators.
The bill will be studied by the law commission, then in public session, from October 18.
The debates can then continue the next day, in the evening, specifies the senatorial calendar.
Among the avenues presented in June, it notably creates a "
budget document listing the consulting services ordered by the beneficiary administrations over the last five years
", and further regulates the services, for example by prohibiting consulting missions carried out free of charge. , say “
pro bono
”.
Supervision considered insufficient
Explosive, the use of consulting firms had sparked intense controversy during the presidential campaign, pushing the executive to react to the accusations.
At the end of June, Éliane Assassi had justified the filing of a bill by denouncing, on the government side, announcements "
but few actions
" and a power which "
has turned its back while waiting for the wave to pass
".
The elected officials hoped that their text would be studied in Parliament this summer, without success.
Since then, the government has unveiled new measures: at the end of July, the Minister of Transformation and the Public Service, Stanislas Guerini, said he wanted to “
give a framework broadly defined in its principles and in its amounts
”, and introduced a cap on the cost of each mission, set at two million euros.
The member of the executive specified that these announcements were complementary with the text of the senators, with which he had “
no philosophical divergence
”.
One thing is certain: several months after the publication of the senatorial report, the subject continues to fascinate the French.
In mid-July, following an online consultation, the Court of Auditors announced that it was going to work on "
the use by the State of private consulting firms
“, by the end of 2023. The Court had not worked on this subject for several years and the report on consulting firms was supported on the platform by nearly 500 people and carried eight times, in particular by the association Anticor.
For its part, the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, led by the rebellious Éric Coquerel, announced a fact-finding mission on these private entities, before doing an about-face, in the face of the indignation of senators who recalled that this work had already been carried out by their teams: the fact-finding mission will therefore not be launched until later, to see the effect of the reforms implemented in recent months.