The pandemic has brought big spending promises — with some even talking of a post-COVID Keynesianism. Yet, the rather bleak reality is that the crisis has turbocharged private consultancy firms’ sway over the public sector.

These businesses had already in previous years exerted a grip on economic policy design, thanks to the longtime outsourcing of public duties to the private sector. But in today’s Europe, the €750 billion in Next Generation EU funds are making such firms into the one-stop shop for large corporations seeking to secure long-term profits. In this situation, there is growing evidence that the European recovery funds — peddled to the public as an opportunity to realize a digital and green transition — will only lead to more corruption, spawning a new type of cartels.

After more than a decade of Eurozone austerity — with civil service staffing numbers frozen — governments have increasingly relied on outside help to perform functions which used to be done in-house. The myriad contracts appearing in Spain’s official gazettes provide just some examples of a now old story of covert privatization which has already cost state coffers at least €378 million, mainly in the last couple of years. The equivalent of the Ministry of Equality’s entire budget has been spent on a wide array of outsourced consultancy services, from strategic plans to the design of resilient policies, technical procedures, and PR campaigns.