The State wants to find a buyer for the magazine 60 million consumers, published by a public establishment since 1970, highlighting its difficulties while employees and even the former delegate minister Olivia Grégoire deplore this decision.
For the former minister responsible for consumer affairs, Olivia Grégoire, 60 million consumers is “the consumer information title” which presents “the best guarantees of quality, neutrality and independence”.
The magazine has been published since 1970 by the National Institute of Consumption (INC), a public establishment based in Malakoff, in Hauts-de-Seine, and which employs around fifty people.
While staff representatives have repeatedly warned in recent months about a deterioration in its financial health, the office of Secretary of State for Consumer Affairs Laurence Garnier announced to AFP on Monday that the State ” wishes to take “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.
“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 Ms. Garnier's office, observing that the magazine has been meeting “since several years” of “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 evolution of 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, from 6.3 million euros to 2.7 million euros.
– Worries and bitterness –
For employee representatives, it is “stunned”. 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 “rebound scenario for the INC” via a “financial contribution from the State to the tune of 3.2 million euros.
Monday's announcement “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 problems”, worry the employee representatives, regretting 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 which have worked for the newspaper for a long time? What will become of the INC without its main media?” ask the staff representatives, 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 relaunch of the title via State investment “was not 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 consumers with good information and “promoting 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 making it through “the year 2025”.
