Extract
[...] On the substance (content): - The Constitutional Council will verify the principle of sincerity, equality before public charges, the principle of free administration - On budgetary sincerity, as it has been specified, this requirement was first laid down by the case law of the Constitutional Council and then taken up within the framework of the LOLF of 2001 - For all that, as has also been emphasized, flexible control, no censorship, is assessed in light of the current data (articles 27 and 32) - Equality before public charges - Respect for the principle of free administration Motif that we find with little sanction, the Constitutional Council will ask to have its own resources III- Control by the Court of Auditors > The Court of Auditors is a financial jurisdiction, but it also has extremely diversified non-judicial competences. - Its role in the control of the execution of financial laws has been significantly increased, by the 2001 LOLF, and by the constitutional revision of July 23, 2008 - The Court of Auditors has as its main mission to ensure the good use of public money and to inform citizens of this. [...]
[...] > Objective of the control: - Procedure + content Respect of the procedure: - The Constitutional Council will censor the fact of not having respected the priority of deposit before the National Assembly (article 39) - It follows that a completely new financial measure presented for the first time before the Senate in the form of an amendment (decision of 28 December 1976) - The Constitutional Council ensures both the proper information of the parliament and the respect of deadlines: - Regarding the respect of deadlines (reminder 70 days for the AN and 20 for the Senate) the Constitutional Council estimated that article 47 actually left a fairly large margin of maneuver for the government. - The fact that it does not 'defer' to the prescriptions of Article 47 of the Constitution and [ . [...]
[...] - The Constitutional Council also checks that all information to parliamentarians (the general annexes intended for information and control of parliament) are deposited on the desk of the AN before the beginning of the examination of the bill in public session by the AN - Blue budgetary documents must be deposited at the same time as the finance bill, some flexibility is allowed for other annexes (notably the yellow ones) . - The Constitutional Council will notably check the financial inadmissibility (Article 40 of the Constitution) - According to Article 40 of the Constitution, 'amendments formulated by members of parliament are not receivable when their adoption would have the consequence either of a reduction in public resources, or the creation or aggravation of a public charge . [...]
[...] the compensation demanded by creditors in the face of the risk of non-repayment (CF - role of rating agencies) > In addition to that, there is also a social security debt It is managed by different organizations: ACOSS, Cades, and Unedic are the main ones. Local authorities (municipalities, departments, and regions) have management autonomy and incur debt in their own name Section II - Different controls on the state budget - Control by the parliament - Control by the Constitutional Council - Control by the Court of Auditors - Control by the General Inspection of Finances (Even if other bodies may also intervene) Parliamentary Control > Mission which stems from articles 14 and 15 of the DDHC Article 14 - All citizens have the right to ascertain, by themselves or by their representatives, the necessity of public contribution, to consent to it freely, to follow its use, and to determine its quantity, base, recovery, and duration Article 15 - Society has the right to demand an account from any public agent of its administration > Essential role of the finance commissions of the two assemblies (headed by an elected opposition member) Can : - carry out investigations on the basis of documents and on the spot, or hold hearings to which the summoned persons are required to appear - request the communication of financial and administrative information, subject to matters of a secret nature - Address, following a control and evaluation mission, observations notified to the government, which responds in writing within a two-month period - Benefit from the assistance of the Court of Auditors Other modalities: - Questions to the government (before July 10) with obligation to respond before October 10 - + possibility of an information mission or an investigative commission - For example, an investigative commission brought in July 2025 (under the presidency of Olivier Rietmann (Republican) and Fabien Gay (Communist) to the Senate (Report n°808) on 'transparency and evaluation of public aid to businesses: a democratic attack, an economic efficiency guarantee' On this occasion, the commission was able to highlight that there are 267 support tools for businesses worth 211 billion euros II- Control by the Constitutional Council > Constitutional jurisprudence has been a pioneer on certain points: control of the sincerity of the budget Interpretation of the texts And applications of these: constitution and 2001 LOLF > No mandatory referral but only 5 finance laws were not submitted to it Only total invalidation to date: initial finance law for 1980 (second part of the finance law put to discussion while the first part is not adopted) Decision of 24 December 1979 In reality, apart from this case, Jurisprudence quite flexible on the control of the finance law? [...]
[...] It therefore has four missions: to control, certify, judge and evaluate 1. Origin > Ancien régime: chamber of accounts suppressed during the revolution > The Court of Auditors was created by a law of September Napoleon I wanted to establish it to pursue the financial cleansing of the country Two missions: - Judge the committees of public accountants (those of the state as those of territorial collectivities = state officials) - Control the management of ministers and other ordonnateurs (with the duty to denounce the abuses and malversations it revealed during its controls, but only to the Emperor Principle of separation of the ordonnateur (competence to decide on receipts and expenses) and the comptable (the one who pays) Principle: the financial jurisdiction does not recognize the right to control the opportunity of the expense, but it can say if the public funds have been used properly > Since 1912, it is installed at the Palais Cambon The decentralization laws of 1982 brought an important change by removing the court's control over territorial collectivities and transferring it to regional and territorial audit chambers specifically created, the court remaining an appellate judge 2. [...]
