By Simon Cherner, Le Figaro Nantes
Published
December 26 at 7:05 a.m.,
updated December 26 at 9:58 a.m.
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The regional audit chamber of Pays de la Loire regretted the late regularization, last February, of the status of a bonus paid since 2010 by the school and already highlighted in a previous report, five years ago.
A remonstrance to end the year. The regional chamber of accounts (CRC) of Pays de la Loire has criticized the financial management of the School of Fine Arts of Nantes – Saint-Nazaire (EBANSN) in a report, made public on December 20, at the end of a audit flash. The controllers were particularly surprised to discover that a “public service premiums”, singled out in 2019 by the audit chamber, by virtue of its irregular nature, continued to be paid to all employees of the establishment instead of being deleted. An operation which cost the school nearly 817,000 euros, between 2019 and 2024.
The board of directors of the School of Fine Arts would, on the contrary, have validated the payment, renewed “the same day” where the report of the previous audit was communicated to it, on October 9, 2019, note the controllers. It was not until February 2024 that the service bonus was finally abolished, “after legal analysis” of the EBANSN board of directors. That is, a delay of five years. A delay partly excused by the CRC, which understands that more priority files have in the meantime occupied the new director of the school, Rozenn Le Merrer, who took office in March 2022.
A leftover from 2010
Paid to all agents of the School of Fine Arts between 2010 and 2024, the public service bonus was a remainder of the establishment’s previous statutes. In the amount of 1800 euros gross, it was paid once a year. Nantes municipal authority since its creation in 1904, the school became a public establishment for cultural cooperation (EPCC) in 2010. The school management was able to compensate for the loss of this bonus by integrating most of its amount within of a new compensation system, made possible by a recent change in regulations. In this case, the school was able to rely on the increase in teacher remuneration, initiated in 2023.
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For Rozenn Le Merrer, the bonus which had been in the CRC’s sights since 2019 was part of the “founding social pact” of the EPCC, upon its creation in 2010. “It was necessary to ask each agent for their agreement to transfer within the EPCC. It is obvious that maintaining the public service bonus constituted an essential condition of acceptability”justified the director of EBANSN, in her acknowledgment of receipt of the report from the audit chamber, dated October 17. Returning to the conditions which allowed this advantage to last for nearly 14 years within the establishment, the head of the establishment assumed the responsibility of maintaining the system, “given the high social risk and the commitment made at the time of the creation of the EPCC”. At least until an equivalence finally allows regularization.
The rest of the CRC report focuses on management “without a clear financial strategy” of the establishment, which lives on the drip of its supervisory communities as well as the State, which provides 85% of its budget. Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and the cities and towns of Nantes and Saint-Nazaire, the EBANSN has benefited from a new headquarters in the Cité des Ducs since 2017. Inaugurated in the district of the old halls of the island of Nantes, the new setting of the school – bought in 2022 for nearly 38 million euros by Nantes Métropole – is now part of the rehabilitated landscape of a local “creation hub”.
