The French national audit office report into spending by the French presidential offices during 2010 was largely complimentary over the achieved reduction in the administration's costs. However, it raised more than an eyebrow over the lack of accountability of spending on President Sarkozy's ‘communications' advisors. Mathilde Mathieu and Michaël Hadjenberg report.
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The French national audit office, la Cour des comptes, or Court of Accounts, has rendered its report on 2010 spending by the French presidency, its third since President Nioclas Sarkozy opened up the accounts of the Elysée Palace in 2008 for the first detailed audit in its history.
The auditors broadly hailed "a reduction in functioning costs" that had been achieved thanks to a "more rigorous" management of accounts, although not without exception. Most notable among these was the cost of the French president's new plane, a specially converted Airbus A330-200 delivered in 2010, which came in well over budget at 259.5 million euros. This included more than 75,000 euros for a set of ovens, and 310,000 euros for a system of electric blinds.
The auditors underlined that "improvements" remained to be made both in the cost of services and purchases, and "in the transparency of costs". On this latter point, the auditors particularly targeted the contracts signed with communications advisors - as in public relations - hired from the private sector. Already, in its very first report, in 2009 - on spending in 2008 - the Court of Accounts had questioned the spending of some 400,000 euros by the Elysée on ordering public opinion poll surveys.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
In their report delivered on July 25th, the auditors did not name the communications companies that were hired by the Elysée during 2010. However, it notes that two new contracts, signed for an annual cost of 308,000 euros, were "with the same companies as before". President Sarkozy's principal private secretary, Christian Frémont, told the parliamentary finance and budgetary control commission in October 2009 that the presidency had contracts with communications agencies run by Patrick Buisson, a TV channel chairman and behind many of the Elysée's opinion poll orders, and Pierre Giacometti, a political analyst and former opinion poll organization director. It is likely therefore, that they were who the auditors were referring to.
The two contracts were signed on November 25th 2010, one for a monthly sum of 18, 538 euros, the other for a monthly 7,176 euros. While the services they provide are in the domain of communications - as in public relations -it is impossible to understand precisely what the specific nature of the services were.
The Court of Accounts noted that the "descriptions of the services provided do not lend themselves any more than the previous arrangement to [an understanding of] the service delivered and its cost." The auditors recommended that "concerning the contracts established in the fields of communications advice and strategy, verify, through a precise list of terms and conditions, that the services provided correspond with their payment, using estimates, which will allow a rigorous control in the future of the costs of these advisory activities."
Socialist Party MP Delphine Batho called for the communications costs to be included in the accounts of Sarkozy's future, and for the moment still hypothetical, election campaign. She told French daily Libération that "everyone knows" that the advisors "are the principal architects of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2012 [election] campaign."
"The Elysée's spending on communications advisors is tantamount to spending on an electoral campaign," she said. "It should not be paid for by the tax payer, but by the candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy."
Regarding the Elysée's use of opinion polls, the auditors had last year welcomed a drop in spending on these in 2009 against the some 400,000 euros spent in 2008. However, they have now discovered that there were no such savings for the taxpayer; some of the spending on the surveys was simply transferred to the accounts of the government information service, the SIG, supposedly controlled by the prime minister's office.
In 2010, the SIG spent about 2.8 million euros in studies and opinion surveys of all types. As a correction to the Elysée's use of its services, 370,000 euros of that amount has been transferred to the accounts of the Elysée. How this was calculated was not explained.
In 2009, the Court of Accounts discovered that the presidency had flouted the rules of public tenders, in a contract signed with Patrick Buisson, one of the two above mentioned communications agency heads, for which no competing bids were sought. Buisson is chairman of the TV channel Histoire and is an advisor with long and close links to the president, and a former editor of far-right publication Minute.
Buisson, 62, has served as the president's advisor since 2007. His agencies Publifact and Publiopinion were responsible for organizing a string of opinion polls on behalf of the Elysée and which were occasionally - and controversially - published in French daily Le Figaro or on TV rolling news channel LCI, part of the TF1 group that also owns Histoire.
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English version: Graham Tearse