When Britain’s King Charles began a state visit to France last September, a banquet was held in his honour in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles Palace, where more than 150 guests, including showbiz stars, sports personalities and high-flyers from the world of business were seated along the length of a 60-metre table. Blue lobster and crab were among the starters, followed by Bresse chicken and a porcini gratin, all accompanied by fine wines, followed by cheeses that included a Comté matured over 30 months, and ending with a desert of raspberry, lichee and rose macarons.
The lavish event and mouth-watering menu came at an eye-watering cost of 474, 851 euros, according to the Cour des comptes, the official body that audits the use of public funds in France, and which this week published its latest annual report on spending by the presidential office, the Élysée Palace.
The report concerns the financial outlay of the Élysée in 2023, in which the auditors notably focused on the costs incurred by travel and entertainment. Total spending through the year amounted to 124.2 million euros, and included a budget deficit of 8.3 million euros, whereas spending in 2022 came in just under budget.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
While the auditors noted in their report that “several external factors explain this unanticipated level of spending (inflation, presidential activity conditioned by the international context)”, they underlined the need for “greater vigilance” regarding “internal factors” that contributed to the surge in spending.
For the dinner in honour of King Charles, the preparation of the food cost 166,193 euros (prepared by private caterers because the kitchens of the Élysée Palace, were undergoing repairs). The cost of hiring extra staff for the service (including waiters) came to 100,428 euros, while the costs of the scenography and decorations amounted to 42,720 euros. The wines, Champagne and other drinks cost 42,515 euros.
Questioned by Mediapart about the auditors’ report, the Élysée Palace issued a statement saying, “France maintains strong diplomatic relations with very many countries which organise equivalent events when they welcome the [French] head of state”.
The total cost of the lavish opening banquet (474,851 euros) was of course apart from the expenditure during the following three days of Charles’ state visit to France, which was originally planned for March last year but postponed due to nationwide disruption from mass protests against the government’s pension reforms. The cost of cancelling the March visit amounted to 80,000 euros.
Another banquet last year broke through the 400,000-euro barrier. This was in honour of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, during his state visit to France in July. The dinner, which was held at the Louvre Museum in Paris, came to a total cost of 412,366 euros. Out of that, almost 173,000 euros was paid to caterers, and 72,000 euros for extra staff.
In comparison, a dinner organised for the state visit to France last October of Mongolian President Khurelsukh Ukhnaa came close to 62,000 euros.
Sky-high travel costs
But beyond the gargantuan feasts, it was President Emmanuel Macron’s travels, in France and abroad, that contributed most to the budget deficit last year. In their report, the auditors noted that while the numbers of Macron’s trips have remained roughly the same, the bill for the public purse has risen significantly; since 2018, which was Macron’s first full year in office, the average cost of his travels within France has almost doubled, and last year reached an average per trip of 60,462 euros.
In 2016, the last full year of the presidential term of François Hollande, Macron’s predecessor, the socialist president went about 142 official trips which cost a total of 17.7 million euros. In 2023, Macron carried out 112 official trips, at a total cost of 23.2 million euros, representing an increase, over seven years, of the average cost of travel from 125,000 euros per trip to 207,000 euros.
While acknowledging that the sharp rise in inflation has accounted for part of the steep increase in spending, the Cour des comptes auditors pointed to “the evolution of their structure and the size of delegations”, and also the “problems of internal organisation”.
It is also the case that Macron spent most of the first quarter of last year within the walls of the Élysée, much of it in a standoff with trades unions in mass nationwide street protests against his pension reforms, which included raising the minimum age of retirement on a full pension. Following that period, when the widely unpopular reforms were passed by decree, using special powers to bypass parliament, he placed great importance on occupying the media space to show he was back in control of his second term in office, which had become significantly bogged down by the pensions issue. “I must re-engage myself in public debate,” announced Macron at the end of April 2023.
Soon after, in the space of just a few weeks, he went to the rural Loir-et-Cher département (equivalent to a county) in west-central France to talk about the problem of a lack of sufficient healthcare professionals, then onto south-west France to discuss the topic of professional training colleges, to north-east France to talk about re-industrialisation, to the south-west Paris suburbs to debate the topic of the attractivity of France for foreign investors, followed by a trip to the southern Ardèche département to discuss industrial sovereignty, and subsequently on to the Seine-et-Marne , near Paris, to talk about air transport issues.
Macron decided to spend three days, at the end of June last year, in Marseille, seeking to become involved in efforts to help the troubled Mediterranean port city overcome a number of crises, not least gang warfare. That trip cost the public purse 342,828 euros, which the Cour des comptes auditors noted as being “particularly expensive”.
The auditors also criticised the excessive cost of a trip to Corsica in September (278,209 euros), and another, in December, to the south-west city of Toulouse to visit the Airbus facility (205,022 euros).
In between times, a trip last July to Oceania, taking in France’s Pacific Ocean territory of New Caledonia, and also Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, cost 3.1 million euros, while a five-day trip in March to west and central African countries amounted to 1.9 million euros.
The auditors also criticised the size of the delegations that accompany certain presidential trips abroad. When Macron travelled to China in April 2023, two Airbus A330 airliners were chartered to carry a massive delegation that included figures like the former conservative French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, and the former socialist minister Jean-Marie Le Guen, who sits on the board of Chinese digital communications group Huawei. Macron’s official presidential car was flown to the country, and about 50 vehicles were rented on the spot to form the presidential convoy.
In total, the visit to China cost 1.8 million euros, which was 40% more than the initial estimations (up by 520,000 euros).
Costly cancellations and re-programming
In explanation of the leap in spending, the auditors refer on several occasions to “problems in internal organisation” at the Élysée, including recurrent cancellations and last-minute reprogramming of events. “While there do exist specific constraints with presidential activity, it emerges that decisions at different levels are often made late, which does not allow for the respect of a defined process, and compels things to be carried out with urgency”.
The recurrence of cancellations is not down to the Élysée’s working practices alone, but were also the result of Macron’s unpopularity, notably illustrated by the cancellations of planned visits around the country during the mass protests against the pension reforms in early 2023. But Macron has, since his election in 2017, made permanent instability a part of his relationship with interlocutors, collaborators, and partners. Several ministers have, over recent years, told Mediapart in private of their weariness at the Élysée’s habit of last-minute changes of programme.
In all, 12 presidential journeys were cancelled in 2023, which is a record excepting the year 2020 when the Covid crisis erupted. The auditors revealed that the cost of the cancelled travel in 2023 totalled 832,328 euros. The cancellation costs of a planned trip to Germany, which had been due in July, amounted to 429,100 euros, while another cancelled trip abroad, to Sweden in February, cost the public purse 180,150 euros.
Among its conclusions, the Cour des comptes advised the Élysée to improve its management of the presidential agenda and to place a ceiling on the size of delegations. It also urged the Élysée to scale down the number of preparatory trips by staff sent in advance of the presidential travel, which the auditors underlined was a costly procedure.
In advance of his visit to Brazil in March this year, Macron sent four different staff teams to South America to prepare the four stages of his visit. When Macron was due to travel to the town of Roubaix, north-east France, in May last year, where he led a homage to three police officers killed in a road accident, his staff travelled there in advance on a commercial flight to prepare the event “despite”, wrote the auditors, “a rule to use the train for journeys of less than four hours”.
The Élysée told Mediapart in a statement that it would “take into account the comments of the Cour [des comptes] for improving its organisation and internal arrangements”, and said it was “mobilised to efficiently manage its budget in a context [that is], on the one hand inflationary, and on the other geo-political and political, which influences the executive’s agenda”.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse