A decadent dinner costing nearly €475,000 for the U.K.’s King Charles III helped push France’s Élysée Palace — the office of President Emmanuel Macron —to a record high deficit last year.
France’s love for grand gestures and opulent dining are fully in evidence in the pages of a damning yearly audit of the Élysée’s budget, released on Monday by the Cour des Comptes, France’s top audit court.
The Élysée’s spending, which includes costs related to the president’s diplomatic and presidential duties as well as administration, personnel, security and estate management, reached a whopping €125 million, plunging the books €8.3 million into the red.
Among the biggest deficit drivers were two luxurious state dinners, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and King Charles III.
A few hundred years ago they chopped heads off of kings and queens for spending too much on everything, and now they do it for them
plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
(The more things change, the more they stay the same)
I’m all for eating a nice dinner. But how do you get to a dinner bill that size?
Famous chefs who have more people requesting them than they have time in the day, so they go to whoever pays the most.
Like, Gordon Ramsey still does private events, but only if they pay more than he could be making with his TV deals.
Good point
Mark up everything by 500%
Do you mean 500x? Because that looks like 500x.
Well, la de da with your fancy regular €100K dinners.
Step one is probably hosting it at the Palace of Versailles
They felt they had money to burn after cutting pensions?
I misread that at first and thought you said “cutting peasants”.
Close enough really
Well it is France.
Why didn’t the king foot the bill he’s the king and he’s rich.
Let the heads roll.
Kings aint get rich by paying for shit.
He’s not the king of France.
I guess this solves part of the mystery about why the French rioted when they raised the retirement age last year
Peasants have been complaining about royal feasts throughout history. You’re just one scrap going through a long line of machines that chew you up, squeeze taxes out of you, and spit you out the other end to dig another hole.
This breaks down into a nightmare in my mind.
What are the components of a meal and the service attached to it that can be stretched to the maximum for someone who “has everything”.
Honestly, expensive produce doesn’t generate this sort of expense.
Must the catering staff all hold MBA’s? Each fork is hundreds of years old and polished to a mirror finish?
The carpet and underlay, is freshly laid for the meal; and then immediately ripped up and destroyed afterwards.
I doubt Charles passed along the edict that he requires an outrageously ostentatious meal, but the French “just knew” that was the right thing to do.
I want to believe heads of state would be content eating the same meals that are served in the Olympic village.
This is the worst form of consumerism, you just point to your nose and people scramble to pamper you with praise, favour and treats.
What a truly wonderful way to outsource waste, without feeling any personal responsibility towards the consequences of your lifestyle.
And that’s to please a king, so it’s not like a political favor. Macron is getting nothing out of this.
Then the rich act shocked and appalled when people talk about a violent uprising.
Why would you waste all that money on a king who is a figurehead at best ?
Because it’s big club and we ain’t in it
I think it was a 100 person dinner full of french and english celebrities, including macron, and the king.
A Frenchman wining and dining an English monarch. What has the world come to.
You were the Chosen One! You were supposed to guillotine the monarchs, not dine with them!
With half a million dinner
Should of got maccas, it would only cost $250,000.
Came for the maccas comment
Well they seem to have saved a lot by not providing reasonable quarters for the Olympic village so it probably works out in the end.
Force everyone who attended to pay their $3,000 a plate bill
That’s a few months of food for an average person
I could make so much cassoulet with $3000
I’d have to know where the money ended up.
I have a hard time being put out for the office of the president having deficits to the tune of 1 million euros if it threw 2 fancy dinners. It’s ostentatious, sure, but not crazy for heads of state and a hundred or more high powered guests in a palace. As an American, I guess I was expecting to see one more zero on the figure.
Sounds typically french to me.
