The French Minister of Economy has admitted that over the past few years there had been “abuses” when it came to the use of consulting firms like McKinsey by government ministries.
The comments relate to two investigations opened by French courts regarding the role of consulting firms in Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaigns in 2017 and 2022. Macron’s administration has faced allegations of favouritism when it comes to the granting of contracts to the American consulting firm McKinsey. This has led to the reopening of two judicial inquiries by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office, which says it will analyse the “conditions of involvement of consulting firms in the 2017 and 2022 election campaigns”.
Whilst the Macron government initially made no comment regarding the allegations, saying that it was up to the court to conduct the investigation, Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of Economy, appeared on French TV on Sunday to acknowledge the existence of “abuses” with regards to these contracts. Le Maire admitted that “we have gone too far, for years, it’s this government, previous governments, previous majorities” who had “probably gotten too used to saying ‘the administration is not capable of doing this work, we will outsource and ask consulting firms’”.
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