As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the agency responsible for France’s influence abroad is going through a serious internal crisis. The director general, Caroline Leboucher, an “X-Mines” who spent her career in ministerial offices and senior administration, is implicated in an anonymous three-page “open letter”. This has been circulating, since Friday April 19, at Atout France, but also within the press, in the administration and in the tourist ecosystem.
The method is particularly violent, as is the content of the text, which criticizes the action of the director, in office since 2019. “ Your methods and strategy cause astonishment and incomprehension among employees (…) Incredulous at the ineptitude of your latest decisions, many of them deplore an organized breakage of what was a formidable tool for promoting the France destination. (…). Atout France is drifting, due to lack of calm and confident management, a relevant and coherent strategy, lack of strong support for network executives and their teams,” indicates the “open letter”.
Caroline Leboucher sent a long email to her colleagues on the evening of April 19, with a copy of the anonymous letter. She defends herself from these accusations, marks her attachment to “quality of social dialogue”and criticizes these “deleterious and malicious maneuvers”. Management insisted on Tuesday April 23, with a press release entitled “The management of Atout France responds to the attacks made on it”.
Tense budgetary context
Atout France executives interviewed by The world evoke a heavy climate. “The heart of the problem is a rather abrupt management style, which goes down badly internally, as well as externally with partners,” comments one of them. Caroline Leboucher replies that she precisely sought to implement transversality in her organization.
Everything is taking place in a tense budgetary context, with the end of certain credits for 2025, and the elimination of certain positions abroad, as part of a network reform. So much for the atmosphere in this little-known structure, which managed, in 2022, a budget of 70 million euros, and which takes care, in addition to tourist promotion, of the “star” classification attributed to accommodation.
A sign of these tensions, four expatriate executives, on April 8, 2024, referred the matter to the industrial tribunal for acts of moral harassment, as well as for failure to pay certain social security contributions. A first hearing will take place in July. “It’s a classic situation of expatriate executives who refuse their transfer. They benefit from multiple advantages abroad, and do not want to return to headquarters”reacts Mme Leboucher, who adds that this conflict around social contributions already existed before his arrival.
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