The Budgetary Control committed by the French Regional Court of Account

Abstract

This article has an objective to study the ideas, instruments, and legal mechanisms of the budgetary control committed by the French Regional Courts of Account. Since the movement of decentralization in 1982, the French legal system has guaranteed local authorities their autonomy. This authorized the local authorities to prepare and manage independently their budgets by suppressing the control of the governor and replacing it with the budgetary control of the French Regional Courts of Account. Because the local authorities must prepare and manage their budgets in accordance with the local public finance principles, the Regional Courts of Account has become the significant actor in order to verify the legality of the local budgets in compliance with the laws. This article was committed by using the literature review method from both primary legal documents such as the French Constitution, legal legislations and regulations and secondary legal documents such as legal textbooks, official reports provided by authorities and institutions, and budgetary documents voted by the local authorities in order to analyze and offer observations concerning the budgetary control committed by the French Regional Courts of Account, which is an ex-post control of the publication of the budget committed by a judicial authority. The budgetary control allows the financial judges to make a public opinion on a budget that must be prepared in compliance with the laws. The results of the study have been found that the budgetary control is in accordance with the local autonomy principle, it supports the local authorities to prepare and manage their budget in compliance with the laws and it also protects interested persons since the budgeting- making procedure.