INVESTIGATION
Since the departure of Didier Migaud at the head of the High Authority for the transparency of public life, the Court of Auditors has functioned without a president. But that does not prevent it from continuing to scrutinize the management of public funds and to distribute yellow cards to organizations that are light in the matter. This will still be the case, Tuesday morning at 10 am, with the publication of its annual report 2020. But what happens to the criticisms and recommendations made by the Court in its previous reports? Are they followed up?
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One thing is certain: the Court of Auditors is monitoring this very closely. Since 2012, it has been sifting through every year all the recommendations it has formulated over the past three fiscal years and is making a score. In last year's report, 72% of the recommendations had been fully or partially implemented. This means that 28% had not been. And among these 28%, 6% had been the subject of a "refusal to implement". Understand: "I don't change anything, I don't feel concerned by your criticisms".
The year 2016 under scrutiny
This year, the Court changed its method: it focused on 2016 alone to see what it looks like three years later. Of the 626 recommendations made in 2016, 75.6% have since been fully or partially implemented.
The complete transfer to the Urssaf of the collection of contributions from the self-employed has thus been accomplished since January 1, 2020. On the other hand, the reform of the human resources management software for National Education demanded by the Elders three years ago was not born. It now leads to a mess of several hundred million euros.
Fear of the Court… and bad publicity
But overall therefore, the cropping up of the Court of Auditors has hit the mark. And what first urges the organizations concerned to correct the situation is that the Court does not let go. In the years following the report, it redo new controls, if necessary on the spot, with the threat of a new insertion in the report of the following year. This is what happened recently for Radio France or EDF's salary policy.
And then the other factor, which probably plays even more, is the media coverage of the report and the fear of bad publicity. When, at the turn of a page, the general public discovers the turpitudes of this or that organism, internally, it gets hot.
Already changes to the College of Physicians
A very recent example: last December, the report on the National Council of the Order of Physicians showed that certain former leaders paid themselves compensation far above the authorized ceiling, and were even reimbursed for hotel nights in Paris then that they lived in Paris. "What they took in full figure, it is the media exposure compared to that", testifies the doctor Pascal Charbonnel, elected with the Order of the doctors of Essonne. "What would be good is that we can see where the Order is in a year. I bet that it will have been put back in the right way."
Proof of the impact of the Court, three months later, the practices, we are told, have already been reframed. And the current leaders of the Bar Council have taken legal action against their predecessors.