CCIs, which have an annual budget of nearly 3 billion euros and employ 18.000 people, are supposed since a law of 2019 to invoice services competing with those "offered by many players already present in the business consulting market", underlines the annual report of the Court, published Thursday.
But the precise knowledge by the chambers of commerce of the needs to be satisfied in this market "remains in most cases superficial", according to the Court, which deplores the insufficient investments in the training of employees.
"The management costs currently displayed by the CCIs on these actions cannot be balanced without the allocation of a significant share of tax resources", continues the report, according to which the CCIs live today thanks to a "taxation at the justification uncertain ".
For the CCIs as for the Chambers of Trades and Crafts (CMA), the Sages of rue Cambon ask "for a complete and taboo-free assessment of the usefulness of consular networks for businesses" which "should make it possible to verify the legitimacy of maintaining public funding ".
In 2022, taxes allocated to CCIs, currently 575 million, will drop by 50 million euros compared to 2019, CCI France President Pierre Goguet told AFP.
But the Court of Auditors severely judges the role played by CCIs and CMAs during the Covid crisis.
This role, which "consisted mainly of giving free information, appears marginal with companies", far behind that of accountants, television and government websites, according to a BVA survey of 800 business leaders cited by the Court.
Conversion obligation
Mr. Goguet and the president of CMA France Joël Fourny regret, in their responses to the Court of Auditors, that the action of the CCIs and CMAs "is thus denigrated on the basis of the citation of a single investigation relating moreover to a subject on which they were not the designated operators ".
The two presidents say that this charge is perceived as "a deep injustice" by "the thousands of elected business leaders and collaborators of the chambers".
"The CMA network must be encouraged and its public nature cannot be questioned," said Fourny in a statement to AFP, recalling that the CMA network is "a leader in apprenticeship training".
"I don't know how we would have supported our companies without the proximity and capillarity of our rooms", declared Mr. Goguet for his part, adding that the employees of the network "are mobilized, weekends included, to help ecosystems territorial ".
In his response to the Court, the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire affirms that "the reforms underway, as well as the health crisis, impose on the consular networks the ardent obligation to accelerate their transformation and to strengthen their visibility".
"The government will be particularly attentive and demanding as regards the respect of these commitments, the quality of the services rendered and the exemplary nature of their internal management", warned Mr. Le Maire.
3 chambers of agriculture in Corsica
As for the 102 chambers of agriculture, with an annual budget of 800 million euros including two thirds of public funds, the Court regretted that the mergers, requested by it in 2017, did not occur.
For example, "the chambers of agriculture of Corsica, three in number for a limited activity, could consider the creation of a single regional chamber".
Deficient, the chambers must improve their management, warns the report, and open their instances, while 97 of the 102 chambers are headed by the FNSEA, the leading agricultural union, and its allies.
"Unjustified costs continue to be borne by the network, often for the benefit of agricultural organizations: chambers of agriculture allocate subsidies intended for the operation of trade union organizations of farmers or grant them benefits in kind", is - he brings back.