APEC's public service mission called into question?

At the end of the year, APEC published the new annual lump-sum contributions for 2010, broken down as follows:

APEC flat-rate fixedé à 20.77 euros:

8.31 euros à chargeable to the executive ;
12.46 euros à chargeable to the employer.

According to Les Echos, the board of directors of the Agence pour l'emploi des cadres yesterday acté a three-year plan that entérines the obligation to distinguish its competitive activities from its public service mission. The company's future depends on fulfilling the latterés mission.

An important board meeting was held yesterday at à l'Association pour l'emploi des cadres (Apec). Its union and employer managers agreed to open up à the public market in outplacement assistance for unemployed executives to competition, drawing the consequences in a three-year plan of objectives, resources and management, which distinguishes between services of general interest érénéral from those subject à to competition.

Ci-gît therefore the « cotraitance » between Pôle emploi and Apec, which meant that the latter managed èthis mission àless costût for the public employment service by préraising on its own resources. The association, set up in 1966 by employers and trade unions, will now compete with private firms, but will not be allowed to dip into the 90 million euros of compulsory contributions collected each year to finance its services. Could it êve been any other way ? Some think so, but the European Commission has now decidedésé.

A little révolution

The contribution à l'Apec étant obligatoire pour tous les cotisants au régime de retraite complémentaire des cadres (Agirc), Bruxelles la considère une aide de l'Etat qui ne peut donc servir à financer des prestations concurrentielles. Among these services are those à intended for unemployed executives, because they are excluded from the association's public service mandate.

This may seem like nothing, but it has forced à a small révolution in the organization, whose opacity été épinglée had in 2007 by the Cour des Comptes in a non-public report. It has had to equip itself with an analytical accounting system, the absence of which had been été sévèrement pointéed out by the sages of the Rue Cambon. But transparency won't be enough: the company will also have to demonstrate the value of its services, which are financed by compulsory contributions. Apec is eagerly awaited to find out how it is going to use the 90 million euros it has been allocated for the benefit of current executives and their employers. Its decision to launch a specific service for mid-career éassessment à is obviously in line with this perspective.

A 100 million reserve

The joint association, which is currently being audited for the first time by the French social affairs inspectorate (Inspection générale des affaires sociales), which is particularly interested in à its governance, is all the more eagerly awaited as it boasts a very comfortable financial situation, like few of its joint counterparts. It has 100 million euros in reserves, equivalent to over a yearés worth of contributions. The decision to vote for a deficit budget this year is therefore highly political. As is the decision, expressed by its Chairman, not to « increaseîour sales cost for cost ». Indeed, the temptation could êbe great for the State to let Apec concentrate on its competitive activities and to récupérerer its contribution, for example to go and feed Pôle emploi.

Source les Echos 04-02-2010