The Cour des comptes praises the CNRS’s “excellent management”

The Cour des comptes audited the CNRS, and has just published its report. What is the gist of it?

Antoine Petit: The Cour des comptes completed a financial audit and management assessment of the CNRS for the decade between 2013 and 2023. In a report published on 25 March 2025, the Cour recognised “a unique operator, whose excellence is universally acknowledged, and whose financial position is healthy”, – something we can be happy and self-congratulatory about. The Cour particularly emphasised that the CNRS possesses “noteworthy management maturity in the sphere of higher education and research” with “an ability to manage a complex matrix organisation”.

The Cour also formulated fourteen recommendations to help the CNRS optimise its resources, preserve its attractiveness, and further enhance its high-level research activities, notably with respect to interdisciplinarity. In particular, the Cour has invited us to improve the use of our excess cash flow – even if it is largely earmarked – in order to attract the best talents, better secure our numerous IT applications, and pursue our simplification policy in favour of scientific activity.

Most press articles on the subject published over the last two days echoed these conclusions, which are very positive for the CNRS, although some of their titles may suggest the opposite when read hastily. I invite all those who are interested in this subject to read the report, which is constructive and encouraging for the CNRS.

The Cour des comptes noted that the CNRS’s cash flow  amounted to 1.4 billion euros. What exactly does it consist of?

A. P.: The Cour noted “a high level of cash flow”, but this does not represent excess cash. It essentially consists of funds obtained by research units in connection with regional, national, and European calls for proposals, which are slated to be spent over several years. They are therefore an advance that appears in the CNRS’s cash flow for the duration of the project.

As pointed out by the Cour des comptes, this increase in cash flow especially reflects our growing success in calls for proposals of all kinds, as well as “the will to grant the scientists who are awarded research contracts the greatest possible freedom in using the resources that were secured thanks to their successful applications”.

The Cour recommends a more strategic mobilisation of available CNRS-generated income within joint research units (UMRs). It encourages their directors to submit a multi-year usage plan to their supervisory authorities and to the CNRS institutes, and potentially pool these resources depending on the situation. It is in this frame of mind that on 1 January 2025 the CNRS pooled 10% of its self-generated income on an institute by institute basis. It simultaneously asked research units to share all general CNRS-generated income at the unit level, and to propose a multi-year plan for its use.

The goal is to establish a consolidated multi-year overview of needs, so that an increased cash flow at a particular time – resulting from the successful efforts of research teams to gain access to competitive funding – does not lead to an outright reduction in the CNRS endowment.

The Cour mentions attractiveness as the primary challenge for the CNRS in the years ahead. What levers do you plan to use?

A. P. : The report from the International Committee established by the High Council for Evaluation of Research and Higher Education (HCÉRES) in 2023, and now this report from the Cour des comptes, both emphasise what CNRS staff members had already stated during the CNRS Staff Survey conducted in the autumn of 2023: “staff recruitment and loyalty will be a central strategic issue for the CNRS” in the coming years.

This is why we made this a leading issue in the 2024-2028 Contract which we recently signed with the French government. The Cour des comptes is extremely clear, and calls for stepping up our efforts “not due to a lesser quality of the positions offered, nor to a decline in the organisation’s reputation, but for structural reasons linked to the functioning and funding of public research activities and careers in France”.

Among the proposed avenues, the Cour suggests “more resolutely activating capacities for the individual modulation of compensation for scientists”, additional funding for young researchers when they are recruited, etc. These avenues largely echo the actions conducted in recent years. The CNRS also points out that index-related compensation is important for attractiveness, as well as being on a level playing field with international competition.