Slippage of public accounts, unreadable global vision of expenditure and revenue of the State, local authorities and Social Security: the governance of public finances must be improved, pleaded Wednesday the Court of Auditors.
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In a report published at a time when public finances are being severely tested by the health and economic crisis, the Court of Auditors finds that the governance of public finances in France has failed.
No balanced budget for forty years, fifteen budgets with a deficit greater than 3% of gross domestic product (GDP) since the creation of the euro, constant worsening of the public finance situation unlike many of our European neighbors, notably the Court.
The Court points to the failure of the various governments to respect the public finance programming laws, introduced in 2008 and supposed to chart a five-year trajectory for public finances.
The results are “
disappointing
”, with “
repeated slippages
” of the fixed trajectories, without the crises or other economic disturbances being able to explain these differences.
The Court therefore recommends strengthening the tools for monitoring and controlling this trajectory, for example by requiring governments to justify any deviations each year.
Faithful to the criticisms already formulated in recent years, the Court also regrets the “
fragmentation
”, the “
fragmentation
” and the “
complexity
” of the budgetary institutional framework.
Many administrations within the State, social security and local authorities, whose “
competences overlap
” sometimes, have financial links which are intertwined, which affects the “
legibility
” of the public accounts.
Thus, within the state budget today there is a
considerable
“
fragmentation
” of the means of financing public policies, part of which escapes the control of Parliament.
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Among its sixteen recommendations, the Court therefore proposes in particular that a new mission be integrated into the State budget each year to bring together all its financial relations with local authorities, in order to have a complete look at local finances.
Or to set for five years in the programming law the rules for sharing taxes between the State, Social Security and communities.
It also recommends integrating into the different missions of each budget (Securities, School education, Ecology, etc.) all the means allowing the financing of these public policies, such as tax loopholes or assigned taxes, and not only credits to the strict sense.
