What is “consultocracy,” to what extent does it affect the Greek public sector, and what role do private consulting firms play in drafting legislation? Vouliwatch and Solomon speak to iMEdD about their new joint investigation and the platform designed to serve as a tool for mapping and monitoring the data for anyone interested.
Translation: Anatoli Stavroulopoulou
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Between 2017 and 2025, the Greek public sector signed more than 3,000 contracts with private consulting firms, whose total cost exceeds €1.5 billion. Consultocracy, Vouliwatch’s new investigation conducted in collaboration with Solomon and supported by the Heinrich Böll Foundation – Thessaloniki Office, documents and analyzes these public contracts. As part of the project, the investigative team published a report examining on the one hand, public-sector contracts with consulting firms that shape public policy more broadly and, on the other hand, the specific influence those firms have on the legislative drafting process. The research data are also openly available on a digital platform, designed to serve as an additional monitoring and analysis tool for journalists and researchers.
What is consultocracy and why does it matter?
Consultocracy, “the excessive reliance of the public sector and governments on private consulting firms to design public policy and guide decision-making”, as defined by the investigative team during the project’s presentation on February 24, is closely tied to the quality of democracy, as such firms are not bound by the strict accountability and transparency rules that apply to the public sector.
Consultocracy: the excessive reliance of the public sector and governments on private consulting firms to design public policy and guide decision-making
As public authorities become increasingly dependent on consulting services, they risk losing part of their institutional expertise. “The State is like an eggshell: you hollow it out bit by bit and at the first crisis, if you’ve drained it completely, it will crack,” noted public administration expert Efi Stefopoulou during the presentation of Consultocracy, referring to the risks of outsourcing and the erosion of the public sector’s expertise and skills.
Conflicts of interest may also arise, given that these firms sometimes serve thousands of clients. A telling example is PwC: in 2015, one of its employees leaked confidential information from the Australian government to other firm clients in order to help them avoid newly introduced Australian tax laws at the time.
Consultocracy’s goal is, first, to bring this issue into the public debate and, second, to provide journalists and researchers with a tool to help them examine such cases.
Stefanos Loukopoulos, Director of Vouliwatch
For Vouliwatch, an independent, non-profit organization aiming at safeguarding democracy and promoting transparency, the goal of Consultocracy is twofold. “First, to bring this issue into the public debate and onto the institutional agenda […] and second, to provide journalists and researchers with a tool to help them examine such cases,” says Stefanos Loukopoulos, Director of Vouliwatch, speaking to iMEdD.
Total Spending for Consulting Services by Year
The initial idea: who actually makes the laws in Greece?
The initial investigation, conducted in collaboration with Solomon, sought to answer the question, “Who actually legislates in our country?” Stefanos Loukopoulos tells us, and explored the role of law firms and consulting companies in the legislative process.
“During that investigation,” he continues, “I kept coming across contracts with consulting firms and realized that many of the services these firms provided were not, I would say, tasks that a ministry or a public body would be unable to handle on their own. […] That’s when we thought it would be valuable to document the extent to which consulting firms have penetrated the public sector and taken over key aspects of its work.”
The initial investigation, in collaboration with Solomon, sought to answer the question, “Who actually legislates in our country?.” During the investigation, I realized that many of the services these firms provided were not tasks that a public body cannot handle on its own.
Stefanos Loukopoulos, Director of Vouliwatch
Thousands of contracts, direct awards, and market concentration
The Greek public sector signed a total of 3,079 contracts with private consulting firms during the period under review (13 June 2017 – 31 December 2025), with their cost approaching €1.56 billion (It should be noted that the contract costs presented and analysed in the investigation refer to the value of the signed contracts, not to the amount actually received by each company). Of those contracts, 62.4% were direct awards. In contracts of higher financial value, however, the award process tends to follow competitive procedures.
As the report notes, although direct awards are a “legally established and, in principle, legitimate procedure for public contracts,” their large number raises concerns about transparency, competition, and cost-effectiveness in public spending.
According to the findings of the investigation, while the Greek public sector has signed agreements for consulting services with 1,266 consulting firms, just 1% of these firms account for 1/2 of the total spending. At the same time, public sector spending is concentrated among a limited number of public bodies, with the Information Society S.A., the Ministry of Environment and Energy, and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport occupying the top three positions in terms of expenditure on consulting services.
For Loukopoulos, the significance of the investigation lies in the fact that “since 2019, a clear trend has emerged in which the Greek public sector increasingly delegates responsibilities and advisory-type projects to the private sector. […] We may not yet be at the level of consultocracy seen in Canada or the United Kingdom, but this is certainly the trend, and before long, we will be there.” The Director of Vouliwatch notes that the COVID-19 pandemic acted as a “backdoor,” with contracts increasing dramatically during that period, particularly after 2021. However, the upward trend continued even after the pandemic subsided.
Number of Contracts / Direct Awards by Year
How Vouliwatch investigated consultocracy
The sole source of data for Consultocracy was the Central Electronic Registry of Public Contracts (KIMDIS), which, according to the report, is the “nationally coherent, mandatory, and fully standardized database for publishing public contracts.” At the same time, it provides better metadata compared with platforms like Diavgeia, Loukopoulos explains.
How did the Vouliwatch team manage to sort through the thousands of contracts they had to process? “The first thing we needed to do was define what counts as a consulting firm and consulting services,” says Loukopoulos. Vouliwatch’s goal was not to document the Greek public sector’s relationship with private companies in general, but rather to identify the firms which influence the design of public policy, such as legislative drafting — precisely where issues of accountability arise. For the purposes of the investigation, “consulting services” were defined as those that provide strategic, organizational, managerial, or legal guidance; design or evaluate public policies; support institutional transformation; or influence institutional decision-making or public communication.
Vouliwatch’s goal was not to document the Greek public sector’s relationship with private companies in general, but rather to identify the firms which influence the design of public policy.
Using this as a guiding principle, Vouliwatch was able to select the types of services, and therefore the types of contracts, that the team would search for in KIMDIS. The search was conducted using one of KIMDIS’s metadata fields: CPV codes (Common Procurement Vocabulary), a European Union system for classifying and describing public contracts. Out of thousands of CPV codes, the team selected those corresponding to the consulting services outlined above.
The CPV system allowed Vouliwatch to identify as many contracts as possible, since other methods, such as searching for companies by name or tax ID, don’t capture everything. Many consulting firms are not well known, while others operate under multiple names and tax IDs.
For reliability, the investigation included only contracts valued above €15,000.
Top-10 Public Bodies Ranked by Total Expenditure
A new research tool and practical tips
For researchers or journalists, Consultocracy “offers a much more user-friendly environment” compared with KIMDIS, Loukopoulos notes. It also provides data analysis, giving the “big picture,” such as the proportion of direct awards. Any researcher can access the contracts themselves (in PDF format), download the data they need in CSV files, and use the various charts included in the investigation. The team’s goal is for the Consultocracy platform to update automatically whenever a new relevant contract is uploaded to KIMDIS.
“If I were advising a journalist who wants to investigate these contracts, I would suggest looking at contracts from smaller companies,” says Loukopoulos. Another useful tip when investigating this topic concerns understanding the different types of contracts, he adds, using “framework agreements” as an example. To be certain that such contracts have actually been activated and to determine the final amount involved, one should also identify the corresponding “executive contracts”, he explains. Finally, it is important for researchers to check for contract amendments, which are also included on the Consultocracy platform.
If I were advising a journalist who wants to investigate these contracts, I would suggest looking at contracts from smaller companies.
Stefanos Loukopoulos, Director of Vouliwatch
Reporting beyond what the data may reveal
The Solomon and Vouliwatch investigation on the legal services consulting firms provide, and specifically on the contribution of these companies to the legislative drafting process, illustrates how the Consultocracy platform can be used. Using CPV codes related to legal services, the team was able to identify 763 public contracts with law and consulting firms, with a total value exceeding €220 million. These contracts often concern the provision of legal services related to Recovery Fund projects as well as the transposition of EU directives into national law.
Many of the contracts involving legislative work, however, are effectively “hidden,” Loukopoulos points out, as the provision of legislative-drafting services is often not explicitly stated in the contract titles.
The phenomenon of firms contributing to lawmaking appears to be more widespread than the KIMDIS data initially suggest, notes Danai Maragoudaki, a journalist at Solomon and member of the investigation team. The investigation was not limited solely to searching data through KIMDIS and the team also discussed with sources. Through these sources, Solomon was able to obtain and publish a contract awarded by the Ministry of Environment and Energy in July 2024. Although this contract included legislative drafting, according to Solomon’s publication, this was not explicitly stated in the contract itself but became evident later based on its deliverables. According to Solomon’s investigation, the contract had been registered in KIMDIS under CPV codes related to consulting and advertising services.
Many sources refused to share information, even off the record, regarding which specific bills were produced with the help of consulting firms, Maragoudaki explains. As a result, “we don’t actually know which bills are drafted within ministries and which are prepared in private companies.”
The investigation’s overall findings raise critical questions regarding accountability, transparency, and the public sector’s dependence on private firms. The extent of this dependence, as well as its cost to taxpayers, are issues that require systematic and ongoing monitoring. This is precisely the opportunity that Consultocracy provides.
