Regional court of the accounts

Missions of the regional courts of the accounts

The regional courts of the accounts were born from the Décentralisation, in 1982. They are decentralized services of the State, with jurisdictional form. Control a posteriori in the financial field, which was substituted for the control a priori concerning supervision, was to be exerted by institutions of the State, independent and close to controlled.

The transverse mission of the rooms is a mission of regulation of the Décentralisation. They contribute to ensure the new balance of the capacities and competences wanted by the legislator. They take care of the regularity, the quality and the probity of the local public administrations. They contribute, by their observations of management and their budgetary opinions, with the balance of local finances.

In addition to the to be able to engage personal liabilities and pecuniary Comptables public (debit balances), they lay out of a important capacity: that to inform . Their mode of intervention is eminently democratic. It is by ensuring the transparency of the public administrations, while informing by opinions and reports/ratios of observations, which are public, the elected officials, the citizens, the public authorities, while placing those in front of their responsibilities, which they obtain the correction of the irregularities and the recovery of the errors of management.

Competences of the regional courts of the accounts

The regional courts of the accounts are a young institution . Since the law of March 2nd, 1982, their competences, as the conditions of their exercise were modified, adjusted, by many texts. Among the most important stages, it is necessary to quote the principle posed in 1990 of the communication of the final observations by the executive of a territorial collectivity at its assembly deliberating and the possibility since 1992 for the prefect and the territorial authorities, to ask the rooms to carry out checks .

In the same way, competences and the legal means of the rooms were reinforced to enable them more effectively to control the markets and the public service delegations.

The law n° 2001-1248 of December 21st, 2001 relating to the regional courts of the accounts and the Court of Auditors and the decree on enforcement of a law of September 27th, 2002 still made evolve/move competences and the procedures of the financial jurisdictions. The thresholds of the reference to the administrative auditing are arranged; the mode of delegation of controls by the Court of Auditors is specified; the examination of management is better defined (formal prohibition to make remarks of opportunity); the rules of contradiction and publication of the observations are reinforced .

The rooms exert three great types of competences :

Jurisdictional control

(cf articles L. 211-1, L. 211-3 and L. 211-4 of the code of the financial jurisdictions in particular)

They judge in first authority the accounts of the communities and public corporations of their spring. They are the accounts of the local government agencies but also of the local public corporations, which can be very diverse (intercommunity associations, communities of communes, communities of agglomeration, urban communities, hospital, offices HLM, colleges, colleges…).

The rooms make sure of the regularity of the accounts and the good achievement by the accountants of the tasks which fall to them. Those can see their personal liabilities and pecuniary setting concerned by the judge of the accounts. Their controls also make it possible to obtain from the accountant, by way of injunctions, which are recovered of the receipts or are transferred of the sums paid wrongly. The sums in question are sometimes very important.

The jurisdictional control of the accounts is not limited to the accounts regularly produced by the public accountants. Rooms, since they note that people involved themselves irregularly in the handling of public money, can them declare, temporarily then definitively, accountants in fact and force them to produce an account which will then be judged. The procedure of management in fact , considered to be too long by the European Court of the human rights, has to be modified.

The examination of management

(cf article L. 211-8 of the code of the financial jurisdictions in particular)

The rooms examine the management of the communities of their spring (territorial collectivities and public corporations). They can also check the management of their satellites of private law, i.e. in particular the companies of mixed economy and associations profiting from a financial assistance higher than the threshold of 1.500 euros.

This examination relates on the regularity but also to the quality of management . The rooms do not have to appreciate the appropriateness of the policy options of the elected officials but the sincerity of the accounts, the financial balance of the operations and managements, the economy of the means implemented and their effectiveness, i.e. the comparison between the means and the results obtained. They can thus be resulted in proceeding to a evaluation of the local public policies .

The observations resulting from this examination are the subject of reports/ratios of provisional observations then final (more than 800 on average annual) which are made available of the assemblies deliberating and made public.

This aspect of the activity of the rooms has experienced for several years an important development. To the checks decided by the rooms within the framework of their annual program were added, since 1992, those requested by the prefects and the directors.

The reports/ratios of observations feed the local public debate regularly. The press gives them a broad echo. Thus each week, of tens of articles of the national press and the regional press are devoted to the continuations of the checks of the regional courts of the accounts.

the Cour of budgetary and financial discipline can be seized of certain irregularities made as regards public finances .

The examination of the accounts and management can also lead the rooms to raise of the made likely of a penal qualification . They then inform of it the public prosecutor via the government commissioner close the regional court of the accounts.

But their role in this field is especially preventive, while taking care of the regularity and the transparency of the local public administrations.

Budgetary control

(article L. 211-7 of the code of the financial jurisdictions in particular)

The regional courts of the accounts take part in the audit processes budgetary by proposing to the prefect the solutions to be implemented in the following cases: budget not voted within the legal delays, budget voted in imbalance, strongly overdrawn account, insufficiency of the appropriations necessary to the payment of an obligatory expenditure, or rejection of the administrative account (general code of the territorial collectivities, articles L. 1612-2 and following).

In these cases, the prefect can regulate the budget of the community or establishment only after having taken the opinion of the regional court.

Contrary to the jurisdictional control and the examination of the management, which are controls a posteriori, the budgetary control is a contemporary control , intended to help the communities concerned to overcome budgetary “accidents”. The rooms, within this framework, are not any more of the critics but councils whose financial expertise and independence are uncontested.

Exist also two other cases of sasines of the CRC by the prefects of department. Article R. 234-1 of the code of the financial jurisdictions lays down the possibility for the representative of the State in the department of consulting the room to collect its opinion on a relative convention with a public service delegation. Article R. 234-2 of the same code lays out that it is the same for relative conventions at markets.

The legal tendencies and lawful concerning the Court of Auditors and the regional courts of the accounts are gathered in the code of the financial jurisdictions.

Practical informations

Each of the 22 metropolitan regions lodges in its center a regional court of the accounts, which is installed in the safe chief town of area in Lorraine (Épinal), in Nord-Pas-de-Calais (Arras), in Corsica (Bastia) and in Basse-Normandie (Bénouville). Overseas, there exist two regional courts of the accounts (Guyana, Guadeloupe and Martinique, on the one hand, and Réunion, on the other hand) and two territorial rooms of the accounts (Polynésie and New Caledonia).

In 2006,331 magistrates, 3 rapporteurs, 334 assistants of checking and 463 administrative officers, is on the whole 1131 civils servant, are charged to make them function (source: annual report 2006 of the Court of Auditors and the regional courts of the accounts).

The magistrates (advisers, first advisers and presidents of section) come from the national school of administration or are accommodated in detachment in the regional courts of the accounts. They wear during the meeting a supplemented black dress of a mortar (cap of black velvet) and of a jabot (reduction). They are irremovable and are subjected to a mode of incompatibilities intended to guarantee their independence and their impartiality. The trade union of the financial jurisdictions (SJF) is their trade-union organization. The collective ENA (C.ENA), gathering certain énarques bodies of the magistrates of CRC, tries at the sides of the SJF to favorably direct the changes which relate to in particular the procedures and the missions of the rooms.

The judgment of the accounts , which can be disputed in call before the Court of Auditors (fourth room) and in cassation in front of the Council of State, was the subject of important procedural changes since a stop of the European Cour of the human rights of April 12th, 2006, of which it results that the civil part of article 6 of the European Convention of the human rights must apply to the judgment of the accounts of the accountants by the CRC ( reinforcement of the rights of defense ).

References

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