JACQUES DEMARTHON / AFP
The government wants to privatize this newspaper (and it is not happening) (illustrative photo taken in 2014)
POLICY – The State wants to find a buyer for the magazine “60 Million Consumers”published by a public establishment since 1970, highlighting its difficulties. A decision deplored by employees and former delegate minister Olivia Grégoirewhich had decided on a recovery plan a few months earlier.
The magazine that presents “the best guarantees of quality, neutrality and independence” in the words of Olivia Grégoire has been published since 1970 by the National Institute of Consumption (INC), a public establishment based in Malakoff, in Hauts-de-Seine. It employs around fifty people.
While staff representatives have repeatedly warned in recent months about a deterioration in its financial health, the office of the Secretary of State for Consumer Affairs Laurence Garnier announced this Monday, November 18 to AFP that the State “wishes to hire” of the “steps to find a buyer for the magazine”. The objective is to “provide the magazine with new resources and expertise, which will enable it to attract new readers”. For the moment, no buyer has been identified.
“Optimize the use of public funds”
“The sustainability of the title requires a professional buyer and expert in the sector, capable in particular of investing in digital and driving a new marketing and commercial strategy”, further specifies the office of Laurence Garnier, observing that the magazine meets “for several years” of the “major difficulties”with the number of subscribers increasing from 140,000 in 2019 to 76,000 in 2024, and “a persistent deficit for 7 years, which has exhausted its cash flow”.
A significant point, in a context of seeking savings for the State, “this change in the status of the magazine will also contribute to optimizing the use of public funds”. A parliamentary report in 2022 already mentioned a “gradual reduction in the amount of subsidy” to the INC between 2012 and 2020, increased from 6.3 million euros to 2.7 million euros.
For employee representatives, this is the “astonishment”. At the beginning of November, they called on Prime Minister Michel Barnier to continue on the path chosen by the government led by Gabriel Attal, that of a “INC rebound scenario” via a “financial contribution from the State to the tune of 3.2 million euros”.
Worries and bitterness
The announcement, which was made to them by Laurence Garnier on Friday, “is disastrous because it will considerably weaken independent expert information serving consumers, leaving more room for sponsored monologues from influencers and fake news on consumer issues”worry employee representatives. They also emphasize that “the public interest is rarely financially profitable”.
“Will the first Secretary of State exclusively dedicated to consumption sound the death knell for the National Consumer Institute? What will become of 60 million consumers without engineers, lawyers, economists… All these trades who have worked for the newspaper for a long time? What will become of the INC without its main media? »the staff representatives still wonder, asking “the maintenance and application of the Olivia Grégoire plan”.
In a press release sent to AFP, the latter declared: “I bitterly deplore that the arbitration that I was able to obtain” in favor of a revival of the title via state investment “has not been maintained”. She addressed her ” thoughts “ “to the employees of the INC, as well as to the consumers whom they have always endeavored to inform as best they can”.
The INC was created in 1966 and is responsible for providing good information to consumers, and “promote responsible consumption”. It brings together a comparative testing center for products and services as well as a legal and economic studies department, it details on its website. Its employees said at the beginning of November that without urgent aid from the State, the INC risked not passing “the year 2025”.
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