The National Assembly adopts at first reading a text to regulate the use of consulting firms by public authorities

A green light with a bitter taste for communities. The National Assembly adopted on Thursday February 1st at first reading the bill governing the consulting expenditure of public authorities. The text includes an amendment, tabled by the government, which provides that communities with more than 100,000 inhabitants (regions, departments, large municipalities and intermunicipalities) are subject to most of the new rules governing consultancy services.

Adopted in October 2022 at first reading by the Senate, the bill so far provided for regulating state consulting expenses but not those of local elected officials. “I have mixed feelings”affirmed the co-rapporteur of the text Nicolas Sansu, communist deputy. “First of all, relief at having finally been able to write this text” on the agenda of the Assembly, fifteen months after the approval of the Senate, “and then a little frustration with certain choices of the government (…) not appropriate”, he continued.

A phenomenon “sprawling”

Several deputies detected in this amendment an attempt to torpedo the text. As local elected officials are the voters of the senators, it is likely that the upper house will delete the government’s amendment on second reading, which would complicate the essential adoption of an identical version of the text by both chambers of Parliament.

Another major change endorsed by the deputies, the law will not apply to consulting services already in progress at the time of its promulgation, contrary to what the senators had wished. On the other hand, the deputies managed to reestablish, against the advice of the government, a provision providing for a compulsory declaration of interests for consultants and firms solicited by the administration. This vote comes almost two years after the Senate report which described the use by the State of private consulting firms as a phenomenon “sprawling”.