The French parliament is now formally investigating how McKinsey & Company came to hold such sway over the French state. A parliamentary inquiry has been launched. The target is the consulting firm’s role in shaping public policy, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the roots of this scandal run deeper than a single health crisis. President Emmanuel Macron’s relationship with McKinsey is not new.
It goes back to 2007, when Macron, then a government member, sat on the Attali commission alongside Éric Labaye, the president of McKinsey France, and consultant Karim Tadjeddine. Those early meetings planted the seed. In 2010, Macron joined the think tank “En temps réel” with Tadjeddine.
There they met Thomas Cazenave. The three worked together on a book, “L’État en mode start-up,” published in 2016.
That book argued for running the state like a startup. When Macron became president in 2017, he appointed Cazenave to a government position. The path from think tank to cabinet was direct.
The immediate trigger for the inquiry was the pandemic. In January 2021, the French government leaned heavily on McKinsey to design its COVID-19 vaccination strategy. That reliance sparked public anger.
Why was a private American firm, with no democratic mandate, so central to a life-or-death public health decision? The question stuck.
Local-language media and French Wikipedia have tracked the affair, calling it the “McKinsey affair” or “McKinsey gate.” The label matters. It signals a breach of trust. The French state spends heavily on consultants.
McKinsey has been a major beneficiary. The sums are large.
The oversight has been weak. And now, the parliament wants answers. What is at stake here is not just one firm’s contracts.
It is the integrity of policy-making itself. When a consulting firm writes a vaccination plan, who is accountable if it fails? Not the consultants.
They are private. The minister is accountable, but the minister relied on the consultants.
The chain of responsibility blurs. That blurring is the real risk. For English-speaking readers, this is not a distant French squabble.
It is a test case. Every government uses consultants.
Britain does. The United States does. Germany does.
The question is whether those consultants become a shadow civil service, unelected and unaccountable. The McKinsey affair forces that question into the open. The scandal has already forced a broader discussion in France about the weight of consulting firms.
That discussion is now official. A parliamentary inquiry means testimony, documents, and public hearings.
It means McKinsey’s internal workings will be exposed to scrutiny. It means Macron’s own history with the firm will be dissected. The details are damning in their specificity.
A president who co-wrote a book with a McKinsey consultant. A former consultant appointed to government.
A pandemic response shaped by the same firm. The pattern is clear. The question is whether it constitutes undue influence or just normal networking.
The inquiry will decide. France is not alone in this fight. But it is the first major Western democracy to open a formal parliamentary investigation into a consulting firm’s role in government.
The outcome will set a precedent. If the inquiry finds wrongdoing, other countries may follow.
If it finds nothing, the door stays open for deeper entanglements between private consultants and public power. That is the real stake. Not a single scandal.
Not one president’s connections. It is whether democratic governments can still make policy without outsourcing their judgment to for-profit firms.
The French parliament is now trying to answer that question. The rest of the world is watching.
