Is there a McKinsey “case”? In the immediate vicinity of the presidential election, Emmanuel Macron’s camp is trying to defuse the controversy over the use of consulting firms, in particular McKinsey, which the opponents of the president-candidate present as the symbol of collusion with the media. business. This practice has been particularly contested since the publication of a senatorial report highlighting a “sprawling phenomenon”. According to this report, the consulting expenditure of the ministries increased from 379.1 million euros in 2018, to 893.9 million euros in 2021. The controversy is fueled by some of the contracts unveiled by the senators, which relate to divisive reforms, such as that of the APL, or even a report on “evolutions of the teaching profession” and their merit pay. “This controversy is linked to people who have made untruths”, commented Emmanuel Macron during a trip to Fouras (Charente-Maritime), just over a week before the first round. “When you hire a civil servant, you have it for life,” he continued. “But he has to have skills that you need over time. When it’s a one-off job, it’s not a good use of your money to create a job that we’re going to pay for the whole career and the retirement.” The President of the Republic therefore considers “completely legitimate to say that if we need a mission, I take someone for the mission, either a contractor or a service provider”. Especially since, he argues, the state has “four to five times less” recourse “because we have more civil servants” than neighboring countries. The day before, during a joint press conference, the Ministers of Transformation and the Public Service, Amélie de Montchalin, and Public Accounts, Olivier Dussopt, also tried to extinguish the beginning of the controversy. According to them, the use of consulting firms is “usual and useful” and that the practice is “widespread”, “usual” and “useful” in the “majority of cases”. The McKinsey firm is particularly in the spotlight because it is accused of not having paid corporate taxes in France between 2011 and 2020. But it only represents 5% of state strategy consulting expenditure, detailed Olivier Dussopt. And the government represents 5% of McKinsey’s turnover, he added. Opposite, all the opponents of the president-candidate, from Jean-Luc Mélenchon to Marine Le Pen, seized the case. “Emmanuel Macron and his friends are trying to shove McKinseyGate, a real state scandal”, tackles Jordan Bardella (RN), while Eric Zemmour accuses Emmanuel Macron “of having returned the favor” because “the people from McKinsey worked for his electoral campaign” in 2017. Ecologist Yannick Jadot promises that, if he were elected, it would be “the end of the unbearable arrogance” of consulting firms which, “with blows of hundreds of millions of euros per year, have thought, on government orders, of the abolition of hospital beds, the reduction of APL and other brutal reforms”.
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