Lhe establishment of a unified financial accountability regime for public managers was expected. She takes shape with theorder of March 23, 2022 and aims to establish a system of responsibility by which the actors of budget execution are accountable for the use made of the public funds made available to them.
Presented by Pierre Moscovici, President of the Court of Auditors, as confirming the centrality of the financial judge in a new renovated judicial order, this reform nevertheless appears disappointing and raises questions. With this new system, is the Court of Auditors still able to control the use of these funds?
Immunity
It is a real concern that results from reading the provisions of this ordinance while the legal framework adopted will limit the possibilities of incurring the liability of public managers. To be convinced of this, it must be understood that the main authorizing officers, the ministers and local elected representatives, will escape their responsibility, except in rare exceptions.
This immunity had been denounced in particular by the previous president of the Court of Auditors, Didier Migaud, who had hoped that with this reform all public managers, without exception, would be held accountable. This will not be the case and this should call into question when the French model presents, on this point, a real singularity. For the closest European models with which a comparison can be made (Italy, Spain, Portugal), both ministers and local elected representatives are responsible for the use made of public funds.
In France, with the current regime, they are only rarely. Thus, only one minister had to report to the financial judge during the Carrefour du développement affair (de facto management involving Christian Nucci, then Minister for Cooperation). While their immunity is total before this other financial judge, the Court of Budgetary and Financial Discipline (CDBF). An exclusion which had prevented the examination of the financial responsibility of Mme Lagarde (“Tapie affair”).
With regard to local elected officials, the new regime incorporates the restrictive cases of opening that had already been retained by the legislator in 1948 when the CDBF was created. Another pitfall of the text, the regional chambers of accounts lose their jurisdictional powers. This point should alarm. The regional chambers of accounts (CRC) had been created to bring the examination of public accounts closer to the territories.
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