According to a report by the Court of Auditors published on Tuesday, the institution’s recommendations were less listened to than usual by their recipients during the health crisis. “The share of recommendations not implemented fell from 19% in 2018 to 28% in 2021”, calculated the Court of Auditors, which this year looked into the execution of the recommendations made in 2017 and 2018.
Thus, three quarters of the 70% of recommendations implemented are only partially implemented. According to the Court of Auditors, this difference is explained by the difficulties of the administrations to deal with the health crisis. In 2020, the institution had thus decided to postpone its campaign to follow up on the recommendations for a year so as not to overload them.
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A phenomenon to watch
Pierre Moscovici, first president of the Court of Auditors, declared during a press conference that we will have to “remain vigilant next year” to ensure that this phenomenon does not last. However, he recalled that it was “logical that recommendations are not followed” because the Court’s recommendations are “not prescriptive” and must leave elected officials and the government the freedom to decide.
In 2021, only 16% of the recommendations were fully implemented, compared to 35% in 2018. On the other hand, some 2% are “not applicable, either because they have become obsolete, or because their follow-up proves to be ineffective given the evolution of the context”, specifies the financial jurisdiction. The institution reports that the health and solidarity sectors have “a particularly low rate of implementation” of the recommendations, particularly in the field of visual care.
Regional and territorial Chambers more spared
“While the Court’s recommendations on the overall organization of the visual sector have, with some exceptions, been implemented by the public authorities, those relating to the control of expenditure have been less so and their effects are still limited,” the report said. For their part, the regional and territorial Chambers of Accounts seem to have suffered less from Covid-19, their recommendations being followed at 79% in 2021.
“This relatively high rate has remained stable over the last four monitoring campaigns”, welcomes the Court, which specifies that their recommendations were issued between October 2018 and December 2020. All financial jurisdictions combined, national and territorial, the percentage of recommendations followed stands at 77%, a stable rate since 2018, a figure “generally satisfactory but a figure on which we must not fall asleep”, estimated Mr. Moscovici.
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