Bullfighting, €1 TER, professional rugby, or recourse to consulting firms: the Regional Audit Office is deployed on all fronts

Une enquête sur les soutiens publics à la corrida avait été lancée en 2024. Midi Libre – MiKAEL ANISSET

The Occitanie Regional Chamber of Accounts will also unveil reports on mobility or the use of consulting firms by local authorities in the coming months.

Coastline, bullfighting, rugby, consulting firms, among others, the Occitanie Regional Chamber of Accounts (CRC) is deployed on multiple fronts. So many subjects whose conclusions, reports or summaries will be unveiled during this first half of 2025.

The president of the CRC, Valérie Renet, detailed the outlines this Friday, alongside the vice-president, Patrice Ros, and the section president Isabelle Houvenaghel. A CRC that will continue the work started on the Mediterranean coast, after the publication on January 24 of a public report by the Court of Auditors on “the development of the Mediterranean coastline in the face of risks linked to the sea and flooding”.

Citizen participation campaigns

This will lead to a collaboration with the administrative court and the University of Montpellier, and the holding of a “round table, in March, which will allow for cross-examinations on the future of the coastline as a whole. A debate open to the general public” underlined Valérie Renet.

Which then opened the chapter on citizen participation campaigns, the themes of the third round of which were made public for 2025. As for the CRC Occitanie, this will involve the transfer of water and sanitation skills to inter-municipal authorities (results communicated in 2026).

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As for the surveys launched in 2024 (public support for bullfighting, and the use by local authorities of intellectual services provided by consulting firms), the conclusions will be published this spring.

Six bullfighting towns inspected

Valérie Renet recalled that, for these campaigns, the subjects chosen (twenty-five per year, ten devoted to the Court of Auditors, and fifteen carried out by the Regional Chambers), were proposed by citizens. And to indicate, for the most passionate of them, that in no case was it a question “of positioning oneself for or against bullfighting, but of knowing if public money is irrigating this sector, and, if so, why, and to what extent”.

Before specifying that the checks were carried out in the bullfighting towns of Béziers, Nîmes, Bellegarde, Saint-Gilles, Vic-Fezensac, and Céret. Individual reports will be published city by city between February and June, the month in which a regional summary will also appear.

Four regional chambers work together

On the theme “local authorities and consulting firms”, the work was managed from Montpellier, but carried out with the assistance of three other regional Chambers (Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, and Polynesia). The summary will be published in June, the reports on Béziers and the Region will be unveiled in February, the one on the Montpellier Metropolis is expected a few weeks later.

“The summary report will indicate whether it is necessary to have a specific law on the subject for local authorities as was the case for the State” added the president of the CRC.

A “flash audit” on the €1 TER in Occitanie

A Chamber which is also continuing its work on all the professional rugby clubs in Occitanie, while it will publish a report on the financing of mobility in general in May. It will benefit from a special annex on the free transport introduced in the Montpellier Metropolis.

Finally, still in the field of transport, a “flash audit” was launched on the subject of the €1 TER in Occitanie. The objective of these quick instructions, “between two and four months, no more: we take up a current topic to enlighten the public debate and the citizen. We do not necessarily make a recommendation behind it, but we put things back on the table.”

Finally, a “essentially financial focus” will be oriented towards the thirteen departments of Occitanie “scanned”, for the occasion. Results in June-July.