Decentralization remains incomplete, according to the 2023 annual report of the Court of Auditors. 429652871/HJBC – stock.adobe.com
In its annual report, it points to several areas where the organization still needs to be improved, such as social assistance and college management.
Decentralization, a policy of transferring powers and resources from the State to local authorities, began in France some forty years ago. But this remains unfinished, according to the 2023 annual report of the Court of Auditors, which pleads for a clarification of the sharing of missions between the central State, the regions, the departments and the municipalities. The contradictions generated by the complexity of the territorial organization weigh on the efficiency of public services and therefore on the daily life of the French people. In its report, the Court points out several areas where the organization still needs to be improved.
Social assistance for vulnerable groups
Decentralized social policies for the benefit of vulnerable people currently mobilize around 10% of expenditure devoted to social protection in France. Despite these significant resources, the Court points to a balance sheet “contrast” in terms of the quality of the services provided and deplores the discrepancies between the territories which cannot be explained by “socio-economic or demographic differences and are of such magnitude that they raise the question of compliance with the principle of equal treatment of beneficiaries”. To remedy this problem, the Court recommends, among other things, defining national data repositories for the main social assistance schemes, in order to be able to more easily compare the action – and therefore the expenditure – of the departments and thus avoid disparities.
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water policy
The question of the organization of the distribution of drinking water in the territories is also clogged by too strong “intertwining of the responsibilities of the State and the communities which harms the effectiveness of the water management policy”, explains the guardian of public accounts. He regrets that the administrations are forced to set up numerous coordination bodies because of this blurring of powers. For example, in the Artois-Picardie basin, which straddles several departments, groundwater and surface water are managed by different bodies, which quite logically causes coordination difficulties between the players.
Colleges
Expenditure by departments in the management of colleges has steadily increased over the past forty years. In 1986, they devoted 4.1 billion francs to colleges, the equivalent of 1.1 billion euros 2020, this amount has more than quintupled to reach 6.2 billion in 2020. Despite this financial commitment, strong inequalities in material conditions between college students persist from one territory to another. In its report, the Court of Auditors explains, for example, that a “Ardennes schoolboy benefits from an average annual level of equipment of 98 euros when the same effort is, for a schoolboy from Côtes-d’Armor, 1,311 euros”. Even if the colleges come under the jurisdiction of the departments, the State, according to the Court, should not refrain from intervening to rebalance the situations.
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Waste Management
This day-to-day policy is above all the responsibility of the municipalities and inter-municipalities. But this reduced scale in a sector that requires heavy infrastructure sometimes prevents achieving economies of scale and pooling operating and depreciation costs. This is the case in Annecy, for example, where, if the agglomeration does not find new partners whose waste would make it possible to operate its incinerator at full capacity, garbage treatment prices could increase by 9.5% by 2026. .