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The federal government spent at least 344.3 million euros on consultants in the first three quarters of last year.

This emerges from internal cost statements that are available to WELT AM SONNTAG.

The front runners in terms of external contracts are the Ministry of the Interior with EUR 128.3 million and the Ministry of Finance with EUR 72.4 million.

This is followed by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Transport, each with around 30 million euros.

The figures do not yet contain any information for the fourth quarter, and the Ministry of the Environment did not provide any information.

The Bundestag member Matthias Höhn (Die Linke) asked for it.

According to its current list, the Ministry of Defense, for whose advisory mandates there was already an investigative committee in the Bundestag, spent around 31.4 million euros on advice and "external support" in the first half of 2020.

Initially, the department had stated costs of zero euros for external third parties for this period, only after Höhn's further inquiries did it correct itself to the amount now mentioned.

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Höhn criticizes the high expenditures of the ministries and the lack of transparency: “The members of the Bundestag do not know in detail which companies and consultancy services are bought by the state.

Here we veil as best we can. "

Criticism from the Federal Audit Office

The Federal Audit Office has also repeatedly criticized the government's lack of profitability when it comes to commissioning consultants.

Its President Kay Scheller told WELT AM SONNTAG that it was particularly problematic if the federal government bought external advice "in its sovereign core area, such as the drafting of laws".

The government must first “always equip itself with its own expertise and thus prevent it from being controlled by other interests,” said Scheller.

Otherwise he would lose "a little bit of legitimation and the trust of his citizens."

In November, the Bundestag's budget committee issued a binding order to the ministries that they would be allowed to buy significantly less external expertise in the future.

“It's about the state's ability to act.

It cannot be that the government becomes a gateway for companies through external consultancy contracts and the state is only a business model for consultants, ”said SPD budget head Dennis Rohde WELT AM SONNTAG.

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Dietmar Fink, professor of management consultancy at the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences and director of the Scientific Society for Management and Consulting, estimated for the newspaper: The public sector spent a total of more than three billion euros on consultants in 2020.

This text is from WELT AM SONNTAG.

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Source: Welt am Sonntag