Memoire Online - Les chambres régionales des comptes

For a sociological approach of a local system of action and a setting in prospect for the action of the financial magistrates through the role of the external financial control exerted by the regional rooms of the accounts (1982- 2000)

General note of presentation

I make a point of thanking the President for the regional room of High-Normandy, Mrs Lamarque, for the reception which she agreed to hold to me, like all the magistrates and collaborators of the room of High-Normandy.

On the report as such, I tried to apply some concepts and to use different in order to elucidate as much as possible the few questions presented in introduction. The report is not exhaustive but I tried as well as possible to use that I had, taking into account the means or information to which I could have access.

I am in addition persuaded, following this drafting, that work of the comparative type, including/understanding the countries of Eastern Europe and from the European point of view, can be profitable to enrich a sociological approach by the phenomena politico-administrative related to the reorganization of the territories.

Introduction

The regional rooms of the accounts constitute an innovation within the French politico-administrative system, since they take part of a renewal of the methods of assessment of the territories exerted by the State.

With decentralization and them « rights and freedoms » granted to the various local communities, the mode of territorial regulation of the public action, deeply evolved so/moved and was perceived like such by the whole of the territorial civils servant^1(*). The properly political nature of decentralization generated a modification of the types of local actions generated by the reduction of the political territories.

The model of the crossed regulation^2(*), which described the particular behavior local actors in search of resources for their strongholds in a diagram vertical and hierarchical, seems to have lived, even if the State remains an important actor in the regulation of the territories.

« The passage of a model of regulation crossed with a model marked by the institutionalization of the collective action questions on the models of co-operation through which the public action is built at the same time as on the transformations of its nature even. It is because one passed historically from a logic of production of public action, based on the supply of services, with a logic of construction of public action, defined by the consistency of the public interventions, that the relations between the actors are considerably »^3(*).

It thus seems to us interesting to analyze the metamorphoses of this mode of regulation by in particular studying the operation of a regional room of the accounts, that of High-Normandy, through the declarations of various actors and to bring back this local situation to the national context.

The position of the actors will make it possible to light us the evolutions of a particular mode of^4(*) regulation : that of the external financial control of the local authorities by the peripheral administrative system and of the evolution of the territorial public action.

Indeed, if the system of the cross regulation^5(*) seems to have lived, to leave the place to an increasing territorialisation of the public action, associated a redistribution of the role of the actors^6(*), it remains to wonder about the forms of reorganization of the decisional capacities of the actors, dependant on disengagement partial of the State of the circuits of budgetary decisions and to the evolution of the mode of the supervision. One thus forwards oneself to an analysis partial of a local government^7(*), which would represent the totality of the public actions determined by the local communities within a given jurisdiction.

Which are the stakes, the constraints or the room for specific maneuvers to each actor in this news gives which joins together the local authorities, the regional rooms of the accounts and the Prefect ?

Which are the lines of fractures between these various participants in the local system of action ? And how they vis-a-vis the stakes are organized determining their participation in the regulation of the local system of action ?

To accompany the appearance of political decision-making centers independent of the bodies of the State , the legislator with envisaged the existence of Regional Rooms of the Accounts, whose mission will consist in applying locally, on a given territory, jurisdictional and financial missions of control normally and historically fallen to the Court of Auditors.

The majority of the supervisions, administrative, financial or technical, heavy on the local public institutions were removed, reduced or softened (from where the explanation, in particular, of the title of the law : « Rights and freedoms of the communes, the departments and the areas »).

In fact, if controls of legality, bearing for example on the budgetary rules budgetary (utilizing representing of the State and CRC^8(*)) can be carried out upstream ; the control of management, even the evaluation of the public policies, are carried out a posteriori, ex-post, on territories in which local autonomy thus was deeply reinforced.

However, if the financial magistrates of the regional rooms do not have faculty, have regard to the democratic legitimacy of the elected officials, to exert a control of opportunity of such or such capital expenditure, concept indicating on the occasion faculty of subjective judgment of the magistrates financier, the publicity carried out around the management of the public accounts contribute to the political change of the administrative territories and the establishment of new rules of operation within the local system of action.

Because it is well there one of the points central of the explanation of the local system of action.

The elected officials, laying out, following the various reforms, of important decisional capacities, in particular in terms of investments of structures, do not have inevitably taste with the financial analyzes not formulated by the magistrates, whom they take for regulations nor with the publicity made around the examinations of management, which form part of local political space and thus disturb the conditions of realization of the local political market, like obtaining the rare resources.

If the legislative and lawful framework appreciably evolved/moved, under the impulse of the policies, since the laws of 1982, it is not the case of the institutional framework which preserved an identical configuration. Perhaps also, would owe us, to explain the modes of coordination and integration of the stakes, to defer us to other analyzes.

We find ourselves here in the wake of P. Wales, following Jessop, « the governorship within the meaning of political sociology is thus defined like a process of coordination of actors, groups social, institutions to achieve clean goals discussed and defined collectively in split up environments, dubious »^9(*). In this context, the analysis of the types of actors and their resources proceed of a step aiming at elucidating the mechanisms controlling the local system of action.

The concept of regulation returns here to the characteristics stated by Lange and Regini^10(*) for which the regulation is spread in three distinct forms : mode of coordination of various activities or relations between actors, the resource allocation in bond with these activities or these actors, finally regulation of the conflicts.

This fact the financial magistrate takes part of this movement of reorganization of the territories, thus modifying the metabolism of the local system of action. Often in conflict, in a legitimate way, with the elected officials or the representatives of the controlled organizations, the financial magistrate became gradually the genuine controller of the acts of the local authorities.

Its position, its statute and its capacities of interventions are the subject thus of recurring negotiations enter various the representatives of the parts concerned, of which the elite of the financial magistrates, members of the Court of Auditors, and this, filtered by the political fragmentation of the territories and the characteristic of the French political system.

Initially, we will be interested in the principal subject of concern of the financial magistrates : local authorities. Those, thanks to decentralization, were seen granted a broad functional and decisional autonomy allowing them, using broad financial amounts, to finance many of the infrastructures related ones to their competences. The methods of assessment by the State of these communities thus changed.

In second the time, us go to see how the magistrates function within the rooms, whose operation appears specific within the French landscape administrative, within a body mainly represented by the members of the Court of Auditors. The financial magistrates appear conscious of the territorial stakes and nationals related to the activity of their room and of the regional rooms of the accounts.

Lastly, we will be interested in the dynamic aspect of the local system of action, through the study of the conflicts, the stakes or of the concrete cases, which structure the opposition between the elected officials, decisional as regards public investment and the financial magistrates, responsible for good behavior of the public accounts swears. This part will enable us to wonder about the behavior of the actors in situation of adjustment of the positions.

I- STRUCTURAL DATA OF THE LOCAL SYSTEM OF ACTION : LOCAL COMMUNITIES, THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE STATE, THE REGIONAL ROOM OF THE ACCOUNTS

THE PHÉNONEME OF DECENTRALIZATION AND THE CONTROL OF THE ACCOUNTS

The Cabinet of the Council Arthur Andersen, within the framework of one « Common mission of information charged to draw up the assessment of decentralization and to propose the improvements likely to facilitate the exercise of competences local », realized in partnership with elected officials of the nation, the result of an investigation presented, via its Director associated, Eric Woerth, person in charge for the local communities, in front of the Mr. Jean-Paul Delevoye, Chairman.

During his intervention, Mr. Woerth outlined a comparative typology of the local communities in Europe and distinguished three groups from country : countries in unit matter (Denmark, the United Kingdom), strongly regionalized countries (Spain, Italy) and countries in federal matter (Germany), testifying to the diversity of the European administrative organizations.

France- and it are thus confirmed by the actors of the private sector - belongs to the group of the unit countries, in spite of measurements which softened its politico-administrative operating mode. The laws of 1982 operated in France a decentralization of competences in favor of the local communities. This conferring of powers specific to the various levels - commune, department, area - is historically deeply innovative in a country marked by a powerful administrative centralization.

The French administrative framework remains unit besides in oneself, on the administrative level, with the recourse to the principles of devolution, and compared to the other European countries^11(*), in particular those having a federal framework. The difference existing between the principles and the applications of decentralization, on the one hand, and the principles and the applications of devolution, on the other hand returns, obviously with the organization of the political order but raises especially of a different philosophy.

Devolution^12(*) returns to the idea, simple, of qualitative and quantitative improvement of the State. That allows in particular, of the savings of time, thanks to the absence of return ticket between the center and the periphery, and a better efficiency of the public action grace a better knowledge of the ground by the local civils servant. If it makes it possible to realize better and more quickly, it also poses, as it will be seen some problems.

Decentralization concerns another logic. Policy by nature, it generates political problems which inevitably have an impact on the organization of the authorities, the realization of the missions of public utility or the general interest existing however for a long time. It contribute of this fact to reorganize the methods of the local government, such as they are exerted by the various communities present on a given territory. This innovating dimension of the policy of decentralization besides was clearly perceived by the actors^13(*) since whom one passed from reforms by small keys to a reform « by the structures », impelled by the center.

It is true that the former attempts, at the time of the years 1960 with regard to the areas and at the beginning of the years 1970 for the communes, with the supposed device to support the regrouping of the communes, inevitably did not give the anticipated results^14(*). The action of Gaston Deferre thus will be largely innovative insofar as she breaks with the fallen through attempts of the past to give to the various territories new rules of the game. The system of action which results from this thus will be restructured by the texts founders of decentralization.

DIMENSIONS CONSTITUTIVE OF TERRITORIAL PUBLIC MANAGEMENT

To take again the grid of analysis enacted by Kiser and Ostrom, in « The three world off action »^15(*), which are the rules of constitutionalization by which the rules are structured of choice and which determines the conditions of possibility of the action of the actors?

[1) The national definition of competences

Which are thus the texts establishing the groundwork of the new system of action ?

The law of March 2, 1982, those of January 7 and July 22 1983 specified the fundamental principles of the distribution of competences according to which the transfers must be done in block as far as possible ; assertion of the principle of equality enters the local communities, transfers of average correlatives to the transfers of competences.

The capacities to produce or interpret the decentralizing possibilities concern mixed one of law and payment. Article 72 specifies that « the communities are managed under the conditions envisaged by the law » and the legislator or the policy has also faculty to draw within article 34, which prescribes the electoral mode of the local communities and their mode of organization, like on the jurisprudence of the Council of State.

[2) The local distribution of competences

Thus, communes, departments and areas « concourrent with the State with the administration and the regional planning, the development economic, social, medical, cultural and scientific, like with the environmental protection and the improvement of the framework of life » (Art L. 1111-2 of the CGCT) and the article L. 1111-4 to specify : « The distribution of competences between the local authorities and the State is carried out, as far as possible, by distinguishing those which are put at the load of the State and those which deal for the communes, the departments or the areas so that each field of competences as well as the corresponding resources are affected entirely either in the State, or with the communes, or at the departments, or with the areas »

The methods of the transfer allocate to the area responsibilities, mainly as regards regional planning, of economic development and regional planning ; of protection of the inheritance and sites ; of vocational training and training ; colleges or habitat and social housing. Since 1986, the Area ensures thus construction, the equipment, the expenditure of maintenance and operation of the colleges and the establishments of special education. What accounted for 42% of the whole of the expenditure of investments of the Areas in 1990, without speaking about the plan Université 2.000.

The department recovers the right to establish a plan of assistance to the rural equipment ; to be qualified for the whole of the legal services as regards social assistance ; to deal with school transport or to deal of tourism and cultural action. 80% of the departmental expenditure are concentrated on three sectors : the roadway system, the medical and social action. For example, the department finances the RMI, to a total value of 20% of the expenditure engaged by the State the previous year.

As for the commune^16(*), it deals amongst other things with the plan of occupation of the grounds ; a right of glance has on the architectural and urban heritage ; it can also deal with the social housing. The investments are often concentrated in operational town planning, the such rehabilitation of old districts or the creation of housing.

The department benefits here principal of the various laws of decentralization, since it receives competences as regards medical and social action, of housing, of rural equipment and of state education, whereas the area has a role more limited- its competences relate mainly to the regional planning but also strategic, bus, from its position within the French system (common, department, area, center, Europe), it exploits a central part of evaluation and reflection the future of the territory of which it holds the close vision. Moreover, in Europe which seems to want to make Area the pivot of the economic and social development, this unit seems positioned well to face the future expiries^17(*).

THE RESOURCES (RECEIPTS) OF THE LOCAL COMMUNITIES : FORM OF THE MECHANISMS OF SOLIDARITY ENTERS THE CENTER AND THE PERIPHERY THEN BETWEEN THE VARIOUS ELEMENTS OF THE PERIPHERY

For memory, the principal receipts are consisted of the four local direct taxes which are the land frame, the land one not built, the tax of dwelling and by the professional tax.

What accounts for 85% of the total of the communal taxes, 65% of the total of the departmental taxes, 60% of the total of the regional taxes.

Admittedly, they exist other rates as the tax of removal on the household refuse, the local tax of equipment or the tax on the motor vehicles but they remain minors.

The products drawn from the management of the inheritance or the sale of services, account for 15% of the resources of the local communities. What can be, for example, the wood sale or the tariffing of rights of access to the libraries.

However, it should well be highlighted, from the point of view of sociology of the political organizations, that the legislative and lawful system set up is not a federal system, but an adjustment of the unit system.

The mechanisms of financial solidarity, like the institutional links between the administrative system and the political system, testify to the strong intrication of the interests between the actors of the local government and the politico-administrative system. Various systems testify to this solidarity with variable geometry

[1) The use of the equalization like vertical redistributive mechanism

the equalization goes back to 1975, supplemented in 1983 by funds national and 1991 by a specific equalization of Professional Tax coming from great surfaces^18(*).

The department distributes the amounts between the communes known as underprivileged, definite according to their tax potential or of the importance of their loads. 2 billion Francs was thus redistributed in 1993.

One also observes the Funds National of equalization of the professional tax (FNPTP) since 1983, affected by set up of the funds national of equalization envisaged by a law of 1995.

This law envisages a principal share coming on old first behalf of the Funds National of Professional Tax resulting from the national contribution of Professional Tax and an equipment poured by the State as well as equipment of compensation of professional tax. As it is seen, the application of principles of equity can lead to complex financial arrangements. This will be confirmed with the following point.

[2) Emergence of mechanisms of horizontal equalization

It is the case of the mutual aid funds of the communes of the Area Island-of-France (FSRIF) created by the law of May 13, 1991. It is about a taking away on the tax resources of the common rich person whose Tax Potential per capita is higher 40% than the average tax potential per capita of the communes of the area. The rate varies between 8 and 10% ; the amount is obligatorily reached a maximum to 5% of the amount of the real expenditure of operation of the commune.

The conditions of eligibility changed in 1996 : they take account of the average tax potential per capita, proportion of social housing, proportion of the recipients of assistances to housing, average income per capita.

[3) Funds of correction of regional imbalances

Create by law ATR of February 6, 1992, it is fed by a levy on the revenues from taxes of the areas, whose raised tax potential per capita is higher than the national average. Its amount is distributed between the areas whose raised PF per capita is higher than the national average from at least 15%. In 1998, 389 million francs were taken on 3 areas to be allotted to 14 areas.

[4) Financial power of the local authorities

As for the transfers of the State to the local communities, they account for 30% their total revenues^19(*). In the disorder, we can quote the Total Equipment of Operation, the equipments of compensation, the Total Equipment of Equipment, the funds of compensation for the value-added tax, the school equipments, the official subsidies, the European subsidies, even the local subsidies.

It is advisable here to make the distinction between subsidies, which are assistances granted discretionarily for the financing of particular expenditure and of the equipments are granted automatically without any precise assignment of employment, in theory, which draws aside any control. Lastly, the recourse to the loan constitutes a last category of considerable resources.

In other words, competences of the territorial entities were seen together with room for increasing financial maneuvers : to the 475 billion local revenues from taxes perceived in 1999, the few 300 billion francs of contest of the State is added.

This responsibilisation, being characterized in particular by a freedom of investment ex-handle, intervenes in a context the resumption of the investments, as example, will prove « inescapable.

Public transport where the projects in progress should require 60 billion francs from here 2005 ; in the field of the environment -

worn water and waste processings- where one evaluates the needs for investments to some 125 billion francs over the period 1997 - 2005 «^20(*).

TERRITORIAL POLYMORPHISM AUTHORIZES A FLEXIBLE PUBLIC ACTION

[1) the aiming rationnalisatrice of the reforms of territorial regrouping emanating from the center

The local political leader, in the realization of his projects of infrastructure, in order to answer the social and political request emanating from his fellow-citizens and to validate his political objectives, sees himself moreover equipping with various tools in order to rationalize his possibilities of investments.

He has in thus the possibility of joining in order to optimize his investments or of increasing his chances to obtain such or such infrastructure within the framework in particular of the regional planning because he has several tools allowing an efficient syndication : trade union with single or multiple vocation, intercommunality, community of communes or community D `agglomerations even country since 1999 and bills known as « Chevènement ».

France and its 36.000 communes, administrative heritage of the French revolution, is obliged to carry out many transverse projects, of vertical or horizontal nature, in order to be able to satisfy the multiple territorial ambitions.

The contracts of plans are often signed with the area because it is on this level that

be carried out planning, in particular through the activity of the regional Conference of installation and of the development of the territory, which gets opinions on the departmental and interdépartementaux diagrams, of the inter-commune charters relating to the realization of equipment or services can give place to conventions with the State, the department or the area.

In Orleans, there is a community of communes of approximately 260.000 inhabitants and the administrative services of the town of Orleans work the hand in the hand with those of the general council of Loiret, however of a different political edge^21(*).

In Rouen, the creation of a community of agglomeration of 400.000 people approximately symbolizes the will of the mayor of miser on a strong inter-commune co-operation. Strong of 33 communes, this new form of syndication (afterwards, in particular, the existence of an inter-commune trade union with vocation multiple- SIVOM- whose existence allowed the realization of a Tram). This new form of cooperation allowed the realization of a processing center of water worn or the construction of a processing center of waste, and upsets the local behaviors related to the defense of small territories^22(*).

[2) A flexible public action

We thus find ourselves from the point of view of what some called one « flexible public action »^23(*) characterized by a logic of construction of public action. This emergence of the room as political prescriber and either like subscriber, within a local system of action giving up the system of the crossed regulation^24(*), split up the territories and restructured the stakes.

The local councillors become directly responsible for their political acts with the installation of administrative jurisdictions.

If the material aspect of the management of the infrastructures is in full upheaval, with in particular the possible recourse to the private groups which weaken the position of many services of the State^25(*), it is especially the administrative aspect of the local communities which disturb the political arena.

By giving an opinion public on the management of the local authorities, the magistrates of the regional rooms of the accounts take part in the recombining of the local system of action. The State is from now on in withdrawal but as we will see it, it remains deeply with the current from what occurs on these territories.

THE DYNAMICS OF DEVOLUTION LIKE METHOD OF THE NEW RELATIONS CENTER-PERIPHERIES AND CHANGES OF THE METHODS OF THE SUPERVISION

[1) Devolution in the French case

Technically speaking, devolution operates a dispossession of the central authorities of the State to the profit of territorial authorities which act within the framework of administrative units. There is a bond of subordination which, precisely, distinguishes devolution from decentralization.

The law of February 6, 1992, known as « Law Joxe », which was going to become president of Coure of the Accounts, thus allowed to evacuate the major part of the problems by applying the principle of subsidiarity, since the levels infra-nationals recovering the missions do not come under the responsibility immediately above. Decentralization thus has, by by-effect , to generate the devolution which thus appeared to the political leaders like the condition for a representation firm and coherent of the State, adapted to the news gives polycentric.

[2) Implementation a recent

Positioned well in the hierarchy of the priority defined by the Rocard government, since 1989, (and perpetuated by the Juppe government), it is also intended to answer three supposed factors to call into question the State : Lack of legitimacy of its local action, the fall of its technical capabilities, the crisis of motivation of its agents.

The movement benefits then from the creation of the projects of service [objective of modernization] and of the centers from responsibilities [autonomy of widened management] and it « revolution copernician »^26(*) is in particular devoted by the charter of devolution, is enacted in 1992, by introducing the principle of subsidiarity, is devoted on a European scale.

· The police headquarters ensure from now on a role of « design, of animation, evaluation and control »

· The regional district assumes from now on policies of economic and regional development, of regional planning as well as the coordination of the rural areas and city, environment, food-growing policies.

· The prefect of Area has even capacities of direction on his departmental colleagues in the first two fields and he is an accountant of the application of the standard European

· The departmental district nevertheless is recognized as being the natural level of devolution of the administrative procedures. It is the level of common right of the implementation of the governmental and European policies, and its means are directly allocated by the police headquarters. The Prefect with faculty to be pressed on its heads of departments and project leaders for mission transversals.

THE STATE AND TERRITORIAL PUBLIC MANAGEMENT : A DELEGATION OF POWERS AND MEANS TOGETHER WITH A PERMANENCE OF THE MODE OF FINANCIAL AND BUDGETARY CONTROL

[1) The remanence of the central eye on the territorial funds

Close friends mechanisms of co-operation remain between the local executives and the administrative services is often intimate, not to say organic.

In fact for example the tax services which communicate the evolution of the bases and the tax rates or the accountants of the Treasury can carry out financial studies. It is still the Directorate-General of the Local Communities (DGCL) which provides quantified tables or ratios fixing of the average main roads by type of community and demographic layer, of which the use in particular makes it possible to prepare the technical assembly of the draft budget. But the State also intervenes, as we saw, in order to provide various advances or of the exceptional subsidies.

It is the case of the free advances on the rates, after opinion of the Treasurer General Payer (TPG) on the communes and by the Minister for Finance on proposal of the Prefect and opinion of the TPG in the case of the departments and the areas.

It is the case also advances for assistances of treasury or exceptional subsidies, mainly for the benefits of the communes, by the ministry for the interior. The State authorizes facilities of treasury indeed. With regard to the payment of the resources, it plays the part of farmer general and of banker and it regulates the amounts of the equipments and subsidies which it grants to the local communities according to variable methods'.

It ensures the tax collection of the rates ; deals with the difference between the amounts of the roles and the actually boxed amount. It is a banker because it makes advances on receipts by using the procedure of the accounts of advances of the separate accounts of the treasure.

With regard to the equipments and subsidies : the Total Equipment of Operation is monthly versed; the Total Equipment of Equipment is poured per quarter for the communes and the departments ; the FCTVA is versed at the beginning of the year following the vote of the administrative account.

However, the treasury of the local communities remains managed by the services of the State. Indeed, there remains an obligation of deposits of the funds to the Treasury, even if there are two possibilities of employment of the free funds going up with a circular of March 5, 1926 known as « Doumer- Chautemps « , confirmed by a circular of the Director of the Public accounts of Dec. 18, 1990, namely the budgetary placements and the placements of treasury.

Of or the temptation of the recourse at third organizations in order to escape the obligation from the deposit to the treasure. That can be the use of Mixed investment and public office Company of HLM, even the existence of organization satellites created ad hoc.

[2) An obliged partnership

In addition, the European subsidies, whose object is to compensate for structural economic imbalances, forward by the administrative services of the area and in particular by the secretariat-general of action regional (SGAR).

Lastly, in particular because of the criteria of convergences imposed by adhesion on the mechanisms of the European Union, the State and the local communities become partners in order to control the public expenditure : in 1996, there was conclusion of a pact of stability of the financial relations between the State and the local communities intended to control the evolution of the principal contests known as active. In 1999-2001, it is the contract of growth and solidarity providing that the equipments included/understood in its normalized perimeter evolve/move according to indices made up of the consumer price index except tobacco.

As Patrice Duran underlines it, « Cofinancing, partnership and contractualisation constitute more and more the pillars of the territorial management of the public affairs, which ratifies the fact that to control is well business of collective action and that there is mutualisation of the resources like risks »^27(*).

The rights and freedoms of the local authorities are thus limited by the organic mechanisms of financial solidarity. There are truly mutualisation of the resources and transfers of financial resources, whereas the State preserves an important weight in the system.

The decisional places split up on the whole of the territory, according to a logic of polycentricity. For as much, according to description to which we proceeded, there is not, strictly speaking, of die connection between the center and the periphery, but a reformulation of the modes of co-operation and organization.

Mode of the supervision, the system evolved to more decentralized and more diversified controls, respecting however, in other forms, the traditional problems.

A POLITICAL AUTONOMY UNDER CONTROL

However, to see in the deployment of decentralization a withdrawal of the possibilities of control of local public management would be illusory. If the fragmentation of the public policies is real, if the relations between the center and the periphery evolved/moved to a significant degree, the control of the territorial public action remains strong and is carried out on various levels.

[3) Establishment of the budget like initial vector of the local public policies

Indeed, the activity of the Prefect is exerted as of the establishment of the budget of the community, which more or less observes the same rules as during the establishment of the budget of the State. The local budget is manufactured in the same way that the national budget.

With the same exceptions : Normally, there is no correspondence between the receipts and the expenditure. However, of many texts exceptions with obligations of assignment of certain receipts envisage which constitute as much attack to the autonomy of management of the local communities.

There can be thus exceptions : specific subsidies granted for a given object ; loans ; even certain tax resources as the visitor's tax intended to support the tourist frequentation of the commune or the payment intended for public transport ; finally equipments of the State which are not free of use as the school equipments.

Financial activities of certain local public services deserve in addition to be individualized in additional budgets. For example of the activities of control, the production of goods or the exemption of services. It thus took into account financial operations there, negative or positive, in the general balances of the principal budget, which limits the attack to the budgetary principle of unit.

On the other hand, of the practices of debudgetisation carry more seriously reached to this principle since one to manage to entrust financial transactions of interests room to other people morals that the community, such as the Companies Mixed investment or associations, whose activity often worry the magistrates of the regional rooms of the accounts.

Even if the establishment of the budget is equipped with the same characteristics as those observed at the national level, the local political leaders are indeed supervised multiple manners.

[4) A control in the shape of iron triangle

To summarize in a diagrammatic way, it is a species of iron triangle which girdles the activity of the local authorities. Upstream, it is the Prefect, who applies primarily the principle of legality ; downstream, it is the regional room of the accounts, which carries out a jurisdictional and financial control ;

behind-plan, the material management of the funds being entrusted, as we already noted, to the Treasury. Parallel to these conferring of powers and with a relative independence in decisional terms, dependant in particular on their statute of elected officials., there is a multitude of controls which frame the activity of the local communities firmly.

The primitive budget can be adopted after opinion of the regional Economic and Social Council. Consecutively to the vote, the budget is transmitted to the representative of the State and to the citizens, which have faculty to pose recourse of administrative nature. The assemblies have the right to obtain information in the course of execution of budget and they must also publish annual reports. Since 1992, the law Sapin reinforced the capacity of information of the local councillors and the right of the inhabitants of the commune to be informed of the businesses of those.

The representative of the State, the Prefect, has indeed faculty to use the submitted prefectoral one in order to seize the administrative court, in the event of non-observance of the principle of legality. In addition, the interest to act is allowed for the benefit of the taxpayers of the community and the members of the local assembly having brought their contest to the adoption of the decision attacked including the members of the regional Economic and Social Council (EC, 1988, Département of the Tarn against Limouzy and others).

What wants to say that the recourse for abuse of power is accessible in case, for example, of absence of entry of an obligatory expenditure^28(*).

Cancellation for external defect of legality can also be called upon since the legal flaw was even pronounced for omission of a substantial formality.

Several cases of figures are possible here and they are checked in particular by the regional Room of the accounts. It is the case when there is a delay in the adoption of the primitive budget, a budget voted in imbalance, a budget carried out in imbalance or in the event of defect of entry of an obligatory expenditure.

[5) The fundamental role of the Prefect

The prefect can indeed seize the regional room of the accounts which exerts a control of the administrative type. The Prefect also can, with intervention or not of the regional room of the accounts, to proceed, relative with a not indexed obligatory expenditure, mandatement of office or an inscription of office to the budget.

In addition to the control of legality, the Police chief of the Republic to the load of the services external of the State in the department . The prefect sees himself thus equipped, at the prefectoral level primarily, of capacities increasing. This last becomes the interlocutor central and impossible to circumvent local communities. Beyond his role in jurisdictional or budgetary control, the prefect has the monopoly of the signature of the conventions passed with the communities or their publicly-owned establishments and plays a crucial part of coordinator of the public actions.

It is a kind of Project Leader, of facilitator to the Anglo-Saxon direction of the term, somebody which connects, and which thus plays a pivot part in local political space.

As we will see it, the Prefect becomes thus the pillar of the contractualisation defined by the improvement major and deep of the conditions of decentralization because the devolution operated into 1992 continues like a reform major of the State.

Created in 1800 pennies the Napoleonean era, the Prefect always plays an essential part within the French administration because the department remains the pivot of French administrative architecture.

Since the laws of 1982, they direct the services external of the State, i.e. they direct and coordinate the action of the Heads of Department. In fact, all flows of information pass through the prefects, who they come from the center or which it are transverse. Since 1992, the department is thus the administrative unit of reference and competences of the representative of the government relate to various fields, the such culture, the law and order, the medical and social businesses, the equipment. He is a permanent interlocutor of the territorial elected officials and its knowledge of the local businesses facilitate the processes of coordination related to the exercise of its functions.

We can thus say that the role of the Prefect grows rich by managerial responsibilities since one asks him to take up new duties expressly, which it assumed perhaps implicitly, in addition to his prerogatives defined in article 72 al.3 and who stipulate that it « delegated government to the load of the national interests, administrative control and respect of the laws ». The prefects of area, have as for them, a particular role since they distribute the authorizations of program after opinion of the Regional Committee of Action.

THE ROLE OF THE REGIONAL ROOMS OF THE ACCOUNTS IN THE FINANCIAL ANALYSIS OF THE LOCAL COMMUNITIES

[1) Missions of the regional rooms of the accounts

More precisely, the missions assigned with the regional rooms of the accounts are of three levels :

- the regional rooms of the accounts can, in certain cases, to carry out a control of the budgetary acts, i.e. to give opinions on the conditions of adoptions and implementation of the budget of the communities and local publicly-owned establishments.

- They also exert a jurisdictional control on the regularity of the accounts recalling the implementation of the budget by the accountant. It is there the origin of their mission. They are judges of the accounts. According to terms' of the Code of the financial Jurisdictions, they are ensured, since 1988, « regular use of the appropriations, melt and values ».

- Lastly, the regional rooms examine of the management of the director, i.e. the person, in general elected, who proceeds to the implementation budgetary and financial of her political projects. It is often the occasion to carry out a true evaluation of the policies followed by the various communities.

It is the most significant point of their activity since the observations of management give place to publicity and so return directly in the manufacture of the local political play. They « examine the management of the local authorities », always according to the terms of the code of the financial jurisdictions.

Elected officials claiming per moment, when they criticize the activity of the rooms, the strict application of the concept of opportunity since they estimate that the financial magistrates do not have to judge legitimacy of their action and that they must be limited to the regularity of the actions engaged by the municipal officials.

The rooms can thus be brought to be interested in management in fact, bearing on handling not - authorized public funds and which can lead to make ineligible the person convinced to handle public funds out of the lawful framework. They also intervene in other fields such as and the delegation market analyzes of public utility, or even the alarm of the communities shareholders of mixed economy.

Jean-Luc Potter and Vincent Boeuf thus retained various values allowing to find itself in the choices melting the principles of intervention of the rooms, such as one can perceive them through the analysis of the letters of final observations^30(*) : internal audit ; budgetary sincerity ; financial balance ; sobriety in the use of the public funds ; regularity of the decisions of management ; transparency of the decisions and the assessments of activities ; the evaluation of the public policies ; the respect of competences between communities and publicly-owned establishments local ; the delegation of the missions of public utility ; equal acces to the public order ; the setting in conformity.

As it thereafter will be seen, they are thus brought more and more to qualify the public action, by what is called the evaluation of the public policies.

Before wondering about the modifications of the system of local regulation, we would like to present some qualitative and quantitative elements relating to the regional rooms of the accounts.

[2) Quantitative elements

To make a short quantified presentation, they are 25, present on the whole of the territory. They exert their control on more than 100.000 organizations.

Maybe, at June first, 1998 : 25 presidents of room, members of the Court of Auditors ; 322 members of the body of the advisers of regional room of the accounts [to advise rapporteur, commissioner government and presidents of section] ; 341 agents of checking ; 463 administrative agents

The Regional Room of the Accounts of High-Normandy

The regional room of the accounts of High-Normandy includes/understands a President, Mrs Danièle Lamarque, a President of section, Mr Jacques Pagès and a Government commissioner, Mr Denis Ruellan.

There is in addition a half-dozen of advisers (the number varies regularly), who are magistrates of the regional room of the accounts, ten assistants of checking, which is as many auxiliaries of investigations for the magistrates, a secretary-general, Christian Quille, a greffière, Mrs Bernagout, a documentalist, Mrs Lardinois and a dozen administrative staff.

- local communities : the area of High-Normandy, Departments of Seine-Maritime and the Eure and 611 communes

- local publicly-owned establishments : 179 communal publicly-owned establishments, 548 inter-commune trade unions and centers from groupings of communities, 76 establishments of the hospital sector, 218 authorized property owners' syndicates and land associations of regrouping, 254 colleges colleges, teacher training schools and other educational establishments of the second degree, 1 public office of HLM

- by delegation of the Audit-office : 10 national publicly-owned establishments including 2 universities and 2 rooms of agriculture.

Over 3 years, of 1997 to 1999, one thus in particular observed 14 final letters of observation and 440 judgments in the field of the jurisdictional control including 1 judgment of management in fact, 2 judgments of condemnation to fine, 9 judgments of debit balance. In addition, the room with contributed to investigations inter-rooms in the field of the departmental roadway system, the household refuse, the organization of the psychiatric care or the heavy material medical equipment. Lastly, 45 tons of supporting documents were delivered to the regional room accounts.

Quantitative elements of the activity of the regional rooms at the national level

Types of organizations	A number of organizations
Areas	26
Departments	100
Communes	36 542
Publicly-owned establishments of inter-commune co-operation	19 728
Other local publicly-owned establishments	40 096
EPLE (colleges, colleges, lesson specialized)	7 576
Medical and social establishments (1995)	2 514
Public offices HLM and OPAC	282
Total	106 864

Source : Ministry for the interior, D.G.C.L, Report/ratio of the government at the Parliament, edition 1996, published at the end of 1997, and Court of Auditors.

Organizations	1994	1995	1996	1997
Local communities	483	438	515	439
Local publicly-owned establishments	172	185	243	207
Other public organizations (HLM, Hospital,...	204	204	199	205
SEM	59	53	71	71
Associations (subsidized or controlled by the public)	71	78	81	73
Total	989	958	1109	95

[3) Some concrete cases of public affairs

The production of local businesses, related to the intervention of the regional rooms of the accounts is important but the object of this report is not to identify culprits but to draw up a repertory of the types of interventions of the rooms.

The activity report of the rooms is regularly published, some is the form taken, in particular by « The Gazette of the Communes ». We here will take an article of 1997^31(*) which shows the various cases of figures raised by the regional rooms of the accounts.

This one proposes a certain number of points which often reveals an absence of control on behalf of the local community or a manifest lightness in the management of some of its business. Thus, the criticism carried to the approximate estimated insufficiency of the actions of communication of the department of Charente-Maritime or study trips organized by the department of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, of 1985 to 1991, which should have shown public reports/ratios, « to avoid malevolent interpretations ».

In addition, if the rooms the importance of the economic stakes, they worry about the facility with which the local communities forsake the control of the counterparts at the time of financings granted to the companies.

Lastly, the financial and budgetary aspect becomes paramount insofar as it makes it possible to determine the room for associated maneuvers. It is necessary to know to analyze the financial health of the controlled organizations, starting from various financial ratios of which that of the debt. It should be noted that much of local communities have here recourse to cabinets of audits, which brings expertise and external glance to them, like that directed by Régis of Castelnau, Avocat-conseil and who produced various publications relating to his professional field of activity.

Often, the rise of the receipts, related on the weight of passed or the wishes of investments, is inescapable.

Position of communities local, have regard with stakes political and economic, is often ambiguous, as to of testifies position to city to Nancy, which in 1994, following a renegotiation of the debt, did not communicate all the time-elements useful for the deliberating assemblies which could not, so to carry a possible controversy.

With regard to the evaluation of the public policies, the regional rooms seek more and more to estimate the adequacy between financial means and the results reached.

« The regional room of Island-of-France carried out a total control of the municipal centers of health of the commune of Sartrouville, which made it possible to evaluate three dimensions : level of the financial follow-up of the activity ; evolution of the exploitation ; adequacy enters the needs to satisfy and the operation of the public utility. The commune has two municipal centers of health (CMS), the center Maurice Berteaux created in 1936 and located in the center town, and centers it Yves Culot, open in 1981 on the plate of the city of the Indies. Proposing medical departments or patient profiting from the paying third, the two centers offer a broad pallet of specialities : The ORL, cardiology, ophthalmology as well as acupuncture, study of allergies or angiology. Taking into account the times put by the commune to gather, at the request of the room, the financial reports/ratios and of activity, the follow-up of the two centers appears insufficient. »

« With an activity in constant progression, the two centers present both of the strongly unbalanced budgets, the total deficit for 1994 having reached 7,6 million francs, that is to say 150 francs per capita. The tables [of analysis of the activity] show that the deficits were in regression, primarily thanks to the effort made by the centers to recover the unpaid ones by computerizing the systematic sending E revivals ; the levels of deficit remain however alarming. (....) The efforts of management which were accomplished must be continued and accentuated. The municipality will have in particular to tend towards the best possible adequacy between the needs to satisfy and the operation of the centers. The room takes note of the intention announced by the mayor to reduce to the maximum the deficits of the two centers »^32(*).

The evaluation relates to all the fields of interventions of the communities. That can be in fact the management of road competences, like the maintenance of the roadways to the load of the departments, the evaluation of the cases of municipal credit, the evaluation of the policies of economic aids to the companies or the evaluation of cultural policies, such as that carried out by the regional room of the Countries of the Loire on the cultural action of the town of Nantes., or the evaluation of the expenditure of social action or the evaluation of the tourist strategy.

II - OUTLINE OF ANALYSIS OF THE OPERATING MODE OF THE REGIONAL ROOM OF THE ACCOUNTS

We now will interest we in the operational world, furnished by^33(*) the strategies and behaviors with the actors, of the regional room of the accounts of High-Normandy, brought back to the total context in which evolves/moves the regional rooms of the accounts.

THE OPERATION OF THE REGIONAL ROOM OF THE ACCOUNTS

[1) General organization of the rooms

Each of the 25 regional rooms of the accounts is organized starting from a generally shared model. One can distinguish three homogeneous sets : formations of deliberated (the room, sections), the public ministry, administrative services. Thus vary from one room to another : the number of sections, the number of magistrates and assistants who are affected there.

Any modification of the organization and the operation of the rooms is preceded by the opinion of the higher Council of the regional rooms of the accounts^34(*).

According to the code of the financial jurisdictions, there is in each area a regional room of the accounts (C. jur. Fin., art L. 210-1), which can be, by decree, divided into sections.

Each regional room of the accounts is composed of a president and of two advisers at least and when the rooms are divided into sections, each section is made up of three members at least.

The rooms are assisted by a police chief of government, taken among the members of the room, delegated by decree to exert the functions of the public ministry under the monitoring of the Attorney General close the Court of Auditors. A secretary, qualified general, ensures the operation of the clerk's office and the administrative services. A clerk is appointed among the assistants of checking, records the accounts and the acts and parts intended for the room, notes the decisions taken and the execution follows from there

The presidents are main advisers or public auditors at the Court of Auditors, named on their request and the proposal of the first president, by Presidential decree of the Republic. The advisers of the regional rooms of the accounts constitute a particular body, within the meaning of the general statute of the public office, fixed by the law of July 10, 1982.

[2) The characteristic of the regional rooms of the accounts

It is also interesting to count the specific features of this decentralized body of financial regulation :

- Its operation is marked by a great collegial structure, in terms of meeting deliberating, including for example a minimal quorum of 3 magistrates.

- The treatment of the files is ritualisé, according to precise rules and procedures. The definition of the Programs of work, i.e. the diary of the interventions, is the subject of a very detailed attention, because it can have an impact on the local political diary.

- The magistrates form a homogeneous body, recruited within the Court of Auditors or by contest and dependant, in terms of career, of the higher Council of the regional rooms of the accounts.

- They are technocrats^35(*) having a legitimate expertise, have regard with their competences and their modes of recruitment. Professional bureaucrats anchored in their expertises and their report/ratio to the administration. The costs of transaction, in the event of changes of occupation, are very high since they would be probably obliged to leave the administration.

- This professional independence is strong since that the magistrates are irremovable.

- The representative of the State, the government commissioner, does not sit within the room. However, its role is of primary importance since it provides the interface the other CRC, communicates with the center, and magistrate, it ensures himself in a prudential way of the good legal unfolding of certain businesses.

- The rooms are indeed autonomous. As Mr. Pierre JOXE at the time of his intervention to the Senate underlined it, it « on the other hand allowed that it could exist differences of jurisprudence or rate/rhythm of control,... [but]... being jurisdictions, the Court of Auditors did not have any hierarchical capacity on the regional rooms of the accounts »^36(*).

- However, the overlap is deep between the CRC and the Court of Auditors. Initially, because the report/ratio of complementarity is obvious with the Court of Auditors of which the goal is to control the State, the public companies or the organizations of social security.

* The first President of the Court of Auditors is also the president of the higher council of the regional rooms of the accounts, authority of supervision of the activity of the regional rooms of the accounts

* The higher Council of the regional rooms of the accounts is dominated by the members of the body of the advisers at the Court of Auditors.

* The presidents of the regional rooms of the accounts are themselves simultaneously members of the Court of Auditors.

* The first president of the Court of Auditors and, near him, the secretary-general, are in load of the administrative and budget management of the rooms.

* He is also the interlocutor of the government and the Parliament for all that refers to the regional rooms accounts, in particular the bills and decrees

* A committee of connection coordinates the investigations common to the Court and the regional Rooms

* Since the law of January 5, 1988, the Court of Auditors is in charge of a mission of permanent inspection of inspection with regard to the regional and territorial rooms of the rooms

THE ORGANIZATION INTERNS ROOM

[1) The diary : programming of controls and rationalization of the means

The programming of controls is a delicate exercise insofar as it must guarantee impartiality and equal treatment for each controlled. Guy Piolé stresses that « the decree of August 23 ratified a procedure of development of the checking routines, which must give place to an annual decision of the president of the room, taken after opinion of the public ministry and consultation of the room itself, in plenary formation ».

To be more precise, it is to the president of the CRC that falls to define the organization and the annual program of work of its room, like the distribution of the lists of organizations and communities to be controlled.

« Among the requirements, to judge the accounts within a reasonable time ..... For that, we assert ourselves four-year programming. We also have the will of a certain harmonization of our controls with those of the other rooms. For that, we refer to work of commissions or committees gathering of the members of the Court or the rooms which work out guides of control. We thus treat topics such as those related, for example, with the territorial personnel, such or such aspect of management of the hospitals and soon with that of the intercommunality installation by reference to the law Chevènement : legal aspects of the transfers of competences, financial aspects of these transfers. »^37(*)

The role of the President is important here since it with faculty to ratify or controls it management of a community being able to occur with some encablures of an electoral expiry conditioning the renewal of the mandate of the elected official in question. The programming of the rooms can thus recover if necessary a strategic character for the controlled entities and, for this reason, it formally engages the whole of the magistrates of the room. This possibility of irruption of a magistrate, in full electoral cycle, pushed the senators to propose a six months deadline of neutrality no letter of final observation could not be sent to a director^38(*).

The model of the geographical competence of the sections or the magistrates is frequent but nonexclusive. This model schematically consists in allotting territories to each magistrate. There are indeed different distributions, according to the nature of the controlled organizations (hospital section, section secondary/higher education) or according to the nature of the accomplished missions (budgetary control for one, jurisdictional for the other).

In addition, « for a good part of our investigations, to only work does not have a direction and it is interesting to work with others.... Ca results initially in a work on the programming which begins in n-1 between all the presidents of regional room... the 25... with the presidents of room of the Court who are 7. Work being prepared by a committee of connection, which functions to him uninterrupted, which must meet once a month, and which is in charge of the coordination of the investigations »^39(*). Moreover, the President of the room can give the tone : « I push them to make programming horizontal, regional, in order to have comparative data on comparable organizations... For example, several school establishments »^40(*)

The allocation of the duties between sections and the assignment of the magistrates and assistants in their center fall within the competence of the president of the room, through his organisational decisions. Thus, in certain CRC, the program a distribution per quarter indicates. Certain magistrates also prefer to start with the large accounts in order to finish in a lighter way. There can be also, as one saw, of cuttings by sector or department.

The problems of sectoral specialization run up however against the necessary versatility to evolve/move, face the unforeseen related ones to the loads of the room or the mobility of the magistrates. The rate/rhythm of the budgetary controls or sasines and the reasoned requests can be eminently variable, since they can emanate several sides, and thus weigh on the annual volume of a room.

There can also be departure not compensated of certain advisers as the investigations inter-rooms produce effects on the calendars of the CRC^41(*).

[2) An increasing rationalization of the activities

The regional activity of the rooms of the rooms is recent. By progressive adjustment or experiment, of the processes of rationalization of the activity of the magistrates allowed an adaptation to different situation.

The perimeter of investigation is freely chosen, which allows for example, the installation of check procedures fast for the small accounts. The CRC of the Midday-Pyrenees set up check procedures fast for the small accounts. A team of an adviser and 2 assistants deals with the community of less than 3.000 inhabitants and whose budget is lower than 10 MF.

The CRC of Aquitaine worked out a device on four levels : normal, selective control on a given topic, accelerated control and a control for the very small accounts

With the instigation of Jacques Pages, President of section, an equivalent system was set up within the regional room of high-Normandy. « It y have creation of a cell of auditing [allowing the routinisation of the treatment of the small accounts]... I of it am responsible on the level for the administrative staff... there are two magistrates who are there to bring in room all that relates to this cell »^42(*).

It is true that many small accounts often posed some problems, because quite simply of the imposing number of communes in France.

The reform of 1988 made it possible to cure to some extent this type of problem by entrusting to the higher accountants of the Treasury (the Treasurers General Payers and particular receivers of finances) the administrative auditing of accounts of the communes or groupings of communes whose population does not exceed 2.000 inhabitants and whose amount of the receipts does not exceed 2.000 million Francs.

What allowed that the number of judgments given under the control of the accounts is divided by two or three, thus making « to leave » some 24.000 communes.

Symbol of a purely technical measurement and making the object of a consensus on behalf of all the parts (elected or magistrates), the Court of Auditors, in his public report/ratio of 1991, had raised that this reduction allowed its concentration on the control of the great communities and the important publicly-owned establishments.

[3) The autonomy of the magistrate

The advisers of each section^43(*) provide proposals for a control in n-1 for year N, with a temporal estimate for the duration of each control. There still, the methods of work of the rooms can vary according to places'. Some can be however the room for maneuver of the advisers in the programming of controls collégialement definite, engagements of the rooms towards four-year control minimizes the room for maneuvers.

Nevertheless, it is true that each magistrate, once his defined program, is more or less free to organize in a free way his diary.

Its activity is connected here with that of the liberal expert exerting his art with complete freedom and this state of mind, aiming at promoting the autonomy of action of each magistrate, is sincerely hoped. This is why the control exerted by the President of room is more formal than material, even if there remains real.

We here will take various examples, extracts of the gazette of the communes^44(*).

Maurice Banos, 65 years, resulting from the Directorate-General of the taxes, is to advise CRC since 1983 (Lorraine, Franche-Comté then the Rhone-Alps), including seven years in the function of commissioner government. He has been a President of section for five years.

With with the head of the third section of the CRC, it animates a team made up of seven magistrates and nine assistants of checking, and it chairs, every Wednesday, the meetings of deliberated relating to its section.

It is associated the development of the annual programme of control of the room (stopped by the president) and takes part in the coordinating committee which meets every week (president, presidents of section, representative of the public ministry, secretary-general, clerk).

«I let work my magistrates. Some, before stopping their topics of control, discuss it with me, others not. Some count the days devoted to each file, others not. I am not behind them the every day, but we have at least a formalized appointment of stage, in June, to note the progress report of the checking routine. I do not correct the reports/ratios presented by the magistrates, because some would take the fact very badly that one asks them to rectify. For the draft letters of observations intended for the directors, on the other hand, it sometimes happens to me to rewrite, before submitting them to the president. Qualities which a president of section must express are the broadmindedness and the availability - without speaking about competence, obviously ».

Jean-Pierre Closes, 42 years, is to advise of administrative court (ten years of practice in Clermont-Ferrand then in Lyon), of mobility with the CRC since 1996.
The adviser of CRC is, simultaneously, rapporteur when it informs his own files (control of the accounts of the public accountants, examination of the management of the local authorities, budgetary check procedures) and judges when it takes part in the deliberations of his section or those of the CRC on the dossiers presented by his colleagues.

«In an administrative court, one is determined only according to the writing. In CRC, even if one finds heaps of things in the bundle, control is also done through the relations with controlled, and it is most interesting. One often says to us, in the communities, which would have been lost if the rules had been complied with, time. It returns to us to show which are the legal and financial risks incurred by not complying with the rules. We are in position of saying: in the future do not do any more that.

Because better, with my direction, a regulation is worth which passes by our intermediary that by the penal judge. This trade must be approached with prudence and circumspection. Within the framework of the examination of management, how to think that one will do in a few weeks what the control of legality did not do in several years? It is not enough to have the capacity all to control, still is necessary it to have the average materials of them. Amateurism could be a risk. To be satisfied to say, by taking stock of ten years of a contract of delegation of public utility, «That missed», would seem a little easy to me... «

Gerard Jousserand, 51 years, adviser of CRC since 1986 (Champagne-Ardenne until 1991, the Rhone-Alps then), is from now on a government Commissioner.
«The government commissioner, representative of the public ministry, must bring to the room a certain legal safety, by taking care that the decisions taken are in conformity with the law and jurisprudence. About thirty magistrates to the room means as many different points of view. The government commissioner must try to standardize the decisions returned by the CRC, the more so as it can create different behaviors according to sections' ».

Its daily newspaper consists in writing «conclusions» on the reports/ratios presented by the examining magistrates (in an obligatory way for the judgments, optional for the examination of the management of the communities), and attends the meetings of deliberated for the most important files. It is also used for legal adviser for his colleagues and the assistants of checking.

«When I was a magistrate of the seat, I found that the public ministry was too demanding, and that he did not want to take into account realities of ground. Become government commissioner, I changed role instantaneously, and it is me, now, which focuses the reactions of mood, because I am perceived like a spoilsport. The government commissioners are there to make respect the law, and they cannot have any state of heart, if not they would be discredited. »

[4) At the rate/rhythm of the organization : collegial structure and contradiction

The production process of the room is however marked. We will endeavor here to specify the process of jurisdictional check procedure and the control of management operated by the CRC, who are clean attributions of the rooms. ^45(*)46(*)

The process is almost always the same one, after the designation of a rapporteur or a team : the magistrate operates a withdrawal of the accounts near the Clerc's Office and begins from the investigations which will in particular lead it to strip bundles and to carry out physical investigations near the entities concerned. Once the report/ratio written, this one will be transmitted for opinion, accompanied by the jurisdictional proposals, with the public ministry.

The report/ratio passes then on of deliberated : the rapporteur comments on, the government commissioner concludes, possible deliberation, decision-making ; either the accountant receives discharge in the event of validity of the accounts, or one will address injunctions to him in order to supplement the file ; at the end of deliberated, the rapporteur writes a project of judgment : finalized, it Co-will be signed by the president of room or section ; notification of the judgment to the accountant, examination of the answers brought by the accountant, new report/ratio, new deliberated, as many time as necessary until the final judgment, if the answers and justifications are considered to be insufficient, it to him will be inflicted a debit balance [nap remaining definitively with the load of the public accountant], the room can, finally, impose fines in certain cases of figures.

The control of management of the local communities and local publicly-owned establishments takes place, him, of office, that is to say since the law of February 6, 1992 on the reasoned request of the prefects or the legal representatives of the authorized local communities.

The rooms are thus interested in the regularity of the operations, implying here the directors and the accountants, but also on since 1988, on « the regular use of the appropriations, melt or values », whose accounts can be supplemented by checks on the spot, operated under the same conditions and forms that those carried out by the Court of Auditors.

The room has also faculty to invite any person concerned with a particular management. In progress, or at the end of the instruction, the first contradiction, abstract, is established between the rapporteur or the president of the regional room and the directors interested.

After examination of the report/ratio by the room, the one second contradiction, formal, is established according to a procedure copied on the jurisdictional procedure (C. Fine jur., art L. 241-9). Then, the procedure envisages the communication of the provisional letters of observation to the directors, which have the ability to represent themselves in front of the room in order to possibly supplement their parade, but do not have an other type of recourse.

And it is also one of the sources of recrimination of controlled, which are not found in front of a traditional jurisdiction, a such administrative court, and thus do not have possibilities of recourse.

The final observations are notified by the president with the directors and the legal representatives of the communities or interested publicly-owned establishments. These letters were initially secret, after the law of March 8, 1982 ; since the law of January 15, 1990 (art 16-II), the room communicates the contents of the letters to the councils deliberating on the organizations concerned with the opinion and the thirds can take note of it as soon as this communication took place (decree of August 23, 1995, art 117). The same procedure applies, any thing equalizes in addition, at the organizations acting, for example, by delegation of public utility.

THE PLACE OF THE REGIONAL ROOM OF THE ACCOUNTS IN THE POLITICO-ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM OF REGULATION

[1) What it is not : the example of the Independent Administrative Authorities

Territorialized administrative body, the regional room of the accounts do not resemble other administrative entities the such authorities of regulation or the agencies, with sectoral vocation or set of themes.

With regard to the authorities of regulation, they modify considerably the political scene and administrative of our country. The regulation indeed changed dimension. The State controls in order to guarantee the life community of certain overflows, like the attacks with the personal freedom or to arbitrate the litigations relating to the activity of certain markets.

We can quote here the mediator of the Republic (1973), the Data-processing National Commission and Freedoms (CNIL- 1978), the Higher Council of Audio-visual (SCA- 1989), the authority of Regulation of Telecommunications (ART- 1996), the Commission regulation of electricity (CRE- 2.000).

They in common have a statutory independence, a posted impartiality and an autonomy of management which enables them to assume a role of referee.

The development of these authorities is recent and correlative of a very contemporary tendency to delegate a role of referee, in determined sectors, at released institutions of any bond of hierarchical or administrative subordination and in which reign collegial structure and expertise.

This tendency is heavy and is found even within authorities of control administrative, the such regional rooms of the accounts, whose working procedure can be connected, because of its independence of decision and its collegial structure, to a AAI. For as much, it is difficult to classify the AAI. They neither are decentralized, because of the hierarchical absence of bond, nor decentralized.

In fact either agencies gather in a formal way, particular interests in order to control or to observe a particular branch of industry, as agencies of water. However, they take part of what is called the governorship, the political regulation by the rule. In this direction, they take part, as well as the decentralization and devolution, of the change of the French politico-administrative system.

THE TRADE OF FINANCIAL MAGISTRATE STRONGLY FRAMED BY THE MEMBERS OF THE COURT OF AUDITORS

[1) Members of a body

Manpower of the CRC stagnate, and the large rooms, in under-manpower chronicle, have little chance to pack itself. Manpower is indeed quasi-constant since 1992. The management of the men and manpower is thus important hopes volume of accounts to be treated. The presidents of CRC do not control the geographical movements their magistrates and do not have any means of proceeding to rebalancings. The CRC of the Rhone-Alpe, in 1995, has to treat 102 files of budgetary control, that is to say 4 files by advising, in 1996, one of the sections of the room recorded a ratio of 16 files by advising. In same time, the CRC of Poitou-Charentes in received nine only (one by advising).

In addition, the magistrates have faculty to leave in « mobility ». In spring 1997, 64 of the 391 magistrates of the body (16,4% of manpower) were thus placed at the disposal, in detachment or of mobility.

So the presidents must manage contradiction between the interest, for the room, that an adviser enriches his competences and the problems by a missing adviser.

Consequently of what, the rooms are badly prepared, some can be the unequal distribution of the entities on the territory, with the quantitative evolutions, such volume of the budgetary control or the emanating number of the requests of the prefect or the local directors. Various exceptional recruitments are not enough apparently to fill waitings, even if that of 1996 had allowed the exceptional recruitment of 117 magistrates.

In this respect, the position of Daniele Lamarque, president of the regional room of High-Normandy, is revealing uncertainties weighing on the fate of the financial magistrates and it is also revealing certain dividing lines within the body :^47(*) « The reform of the statute of the advisers of the rooms, which will come soon, we hope for it, before the Parliament, comprises in this respect significant measurements. This text ensures a more fluid course of career, with the reduction of the number of ranks from four to three. It opens a faculty of integration at the court. It guarantees a better transparency in the management of the careers. To be complete, this reform must be supplied with a handing-over on level of additional remunerations of the advisers of room : their evolution took delay compared to those of bodies comparable recruited with the exit of the ENA ..... In the same way, we do not completely control the management of the professional mobility, which is one of the conditions of « breathing » of the body and its enrichment.... Irremovability protects its members, by utilizing advisory authorities at significant times that the nomination, mobility, promotion ».

[2) Division of the labor within a regional room of the accounts

In addition, the financial magistrates are not the only financial magistrates. Admittedly, they are responsible for the investigation and passes in sessions of deliberated to listen to if necessary the remarks of their colleagues but they are also pressed on assistants of checking. The latter often form tandem with the magistrates.

As Mrs Karbouche underlines it, « their professional and personal course can lead them to have different competences and capacities, therefore the magistrate entrusts very different tasks to an assistant according to its, his desire, his curiosity, his capacity »^48(*). The assistants are also brought to work with various magistrates during their career : « I belonged to the first assistants during creation of the rooms, at the time one was three, good, at the administrative level, I come from the Directorate-General of Taxes (DGI), I am placed at the disposal by the DGI near the room of the accounts ..... Our work consists with, it is a work of pure control... It is we who begin the checking starting from a program which is transmitted to us by the magistrate, who himself with have his program by the president of the room.... It is we who examine the accounting records...... (there is) several manners of proceeding according to binomials'... Either it leaves whole freedom to the assistant, or it lays down objectives to him, you check the investments on such or such year. »^49(*).

Francoise Barnier, administrative assistant central to the ministry of Finances, was also availability of a regional room. She also Co-informs the files of control by checking the documents physically and while writing, if necessary, of the reports/ratios or the draft letters of observation. :

« The anguish here [CRC the Rhone-Alps] is the same one as in any body of control : not being able to make exhaustive control, one is never safe from have passed beside something of important .

As nothing is found, or that small things, it is not very developing for the binomial adviser-assistant of checking, but one comforts oneself by thinking that it is good sign for the finance public "^50(*).

Another actor plays an important part within the room, it is that of Police chief of government. « The Police chief of government is there to make legal day before on what occurs in the room... The second thing and which employ 50% of my time, it is to make conclusions on the reports/ratios of my colleagues... It is not the case in all the rooms... Simply the contentious reports/ratios are the subject the obligatory communication of to the government. And this communication forces to me to make written conclusions. »^51(*) The Government Commissioner is obligatorily a former magistrate, who knows necessarily the obligations related to the function.

[3) The trade of magistrate within the room

Remain that the trade of magistrate consists in analyzing the accounts and only the accounts. As Philippe Boeton underlines it, one of the major problems remains the comprehension of the behavior of the managers : « We badly do not have magistrates who never made administration activates... They remained in the jurisdictional field... But they did not know the difficulty for the manager of being confronted with the right, gold for controlling well, it also should be included/understood how the managers are brought to make decisions »^52(*).

However, the reception which one holds to the magistrate is not systematically loan of suspicion. « The elected officials whom I know, they are completely well laid out in our connection and they await with interest the result of our work...

They need external information compared to what says to them the other territorial elected officials or the other civils servant »^53(*).

The technical or functional correspondents of the financial magistrates are also quite disposed in their opposition. « The CRC, tells Christian Marquet, associated secretary-general of Roanne, wanted especially to make sure that the financial life of the city was well controlled », which led it in detail to peel the management of the debt and the treasury.

Christian Marquet thus transmitted to the magistrate, for all the controlled period, the whole of the reports/ratios which it writes for submission to the committee of supply. Those, beyond the profits carried out, account for the strategy of debt and the casch management adopted by the direction of finances. Result : observations of the room « highlight that Roanne gave again room for maneuvers while exploiting its bottom of assessment » »^54(*).

For Joel Lebourg, secretary-general, it is however necessary to moderate the table^55(*) : « Nobody can dispute the paramount part played by the regional rooms of the accounts in the total context of decentralization, I would not dispute the opinions given by the eminent territorial, burning administrators (too much ?) defenders of the courses regional of the accounts. However, one can for example deplore that the relation with the magistrate in load of a control is not based on collaboration, but more,... on mistrust, the search for a less index of a fault, the inquisitorial side and the feeling that there is, a priori, inevitably « chicanery » some share .................. But when one speaks about effectiveness and efficiency, concern of which should be inspired the local communities, I think that the slownesses observed on the level of the jurisdictions, whatever is the order, become increasingly inadmissible. It is sometimes not easily comprehensible that observation, even of the sanction, relate to facts or generating decisions of rights, catches several years before, under the lawful conditions, with control of legality with the support.

There is no question of questioning competences of « holders » of the control of legality, which misses, them also, of means. But, in parallel, the control a priori which must be carried out runs up, him also, with the problem of competences and the means. »

The magistrate charged to control the accounts finds on his way of investigation the prescriber of the handling of the funds (the director) and the accountant, that which handles the funds.

The latter check the funds after having examined the validity of it and control the countable device (quality of the director, availability of the funds, validity of the credit, legal tender character of the payment).

Correlatively, the accountant is responsible for the operations related to the handling of the funds but it cannot be however opposed to the client.

As underlines it an implied observer, Régis of Castelnau, Avocat-conseil to the local communities, « many directors had to make the training. , of a mode of control with which, up to that point, they had not been confronted »^56(*). The author does not suppose results quantifiable but personal confrontation has to reinforce the severity of the accountant.

« In two words and to speak about the dispute, the task of the room aims two types of people, the directors, the accountants. ... The accountants, that passes by way of judgment... This dispute can continue before the Court of Auditors. The Council of State acting as Supreme court of appeal in our order of jurisdiction.... Directing side, the dispute could be the dispute by the director of the observations which are made by the room of the accounts...

I make sure nevertheless that the room followed the procedure which makes it possible the director to contradict and in particular, the CRC is obliged to propose with

The examination of management poses the delicate problem of the division between opportunity and regularity ; because the judge does not have to put forth judgments on the choices which concern the political responsibility for the elected official. Also, the jurisdictional aspect is not the aspect which poses the most problem with the magistrates because it is also marked out the most.

There or of the questions are more and more frequently posed, it is in the field of the examination of management.

« From now on, in the majority of controls of management, one takes some sectors of public policies and one will try to deepen. One examined for example the management of domestic waste ........... One cannot say that the letters of the rooms are really audits.... ..... The large accounts concern the plenary one, therefore one will examine in this formation the very great communities, the area, two departments, the CHU, the large communities, Evreux, Le Havre »^58(*).

As the additions Jacques Pages, the President of section of the regional room of High-Normandy : « The control of management is rather difficult to define knowing that there are, in my direction, some obliged passages : which is the financial standing of the community ? The bolts necessary to correct use of the public funds were set up within the services of the community ? The operations of devolutions of the markets are they correctly unrolled ?

As much to say that the control of management appears as the principal mission of the regional rooms knowing that gradually we direct ourselves towards an evaluation of the public policies : the objectives that was fixed the deliberating body are achieved ? »^59(*).

And this passage of the control of management to the evaluation of the public policies is an eminently recent evolution.

« Essential modification that I would see [Compared to its period of magistrate, between 1986 and 1993]... It is that we turn at present much more to control of management...

One is turning much more to the director that towards the accountant, it is perhaps for that that the directors ruent a little bit in the stretchers... Senators. in particular... claimed that the public ministry concludes explicitly on the observations from management which are emitted... That wants to say that they tried to draw up an additional legal barrier ....... One clings much more to the financial standings communes...

These financial analyzes are done in two directions, if you want, the evolution of the commune itself and then the comparisons with the other communities ..... One would move towards an appreciation in the manner of working of the accountant »^60(*).

It is true that those also evolve/move : « There are technicalities increasingly large in the local communities and in particular the financial technique ..... the financial technique evolves/moves enormously... Then we have continuing educations »^61(*).

Other subjects of recrimination can appear. «As regards accountant... It is to impose sanctions and settings in debit balance to them. on subjects without minor doubts and which do not reflect the anomalies that they they know. They must think that one does not go where it is important...

Perhaps can they also think that one rather easily traps them on anomalies which they made... And they cannot all see... As regards elected official, I do not think that here, in High-Normandy, one makes us really reproaches of control of opportunity »^62(*) .

This last assertion is confirmed by Jacques Pagès : « At the jurisdictional level, it is to be sometimes a little too severe.... By the elected officials, it is to involve us a little too much in the management of their community whereas they consider responsible only in front of the voter. However, there is no example of control in which we would be interfered opportunity »^63(*).

Opportunity is the concept which determines the bond institutionnellement agonistic between the magistrate and the elected official. On the democratic legitimacy of the one, is superimposed technocratic and administrative legitimacy other, charged to avoid, in the most objective way and most neutral which is, with the fellow-citizens a financial shipwreck, such as for example the town of Angouleme, in the previous years.

[4) An organization in network directed by the members of the Court of Auditors

As the President of the room underlines it, Mrs Lamarque, the legislative text could open a faculty of integration at the Court. This faculty of integration by the top testifies to the stake taken by the development of the activities of the rooms, which, by by-effect, revalorizes the statute of magistrates whose promotion is organically limited.

« The reform of the statute of the advisers of room, which will come soon, we hope for it before the Parliament, comprises in this respect significant measurements. This text ensures a more fluid course of career, with the reduction of the number of ranks from four to three. It opens a faculty of integration at the Court. It guarantees a better transparency in the management of the careers »^64(*).

	In a number	Expressed as a percentage
ENA (direct recruitment)	82	21,4%
Finances	155	40,5%
Interior	18	4,7%
Defense	20	5,2%
Officers	12	3,1%
National education	19	5,0%
Social affairs	22	5,7%
Postal and telecommunications authorities	8	2,1%
Agriculture	4	1,0%
Prime Minister	2	0,5%
Local communities	26	6,8%
Others	12	3,1%
Total	383	100%

Because the operation of the rooms is dominated by the members of the Court of Auditors, one of the oldest French administrative institutions^65(*), created in 1807, subsequently to the Council of State.

Thus, as one notes it, if the majority of the financial magistrates does not result from the ENA, it is however elite of ENA, members of Court of Auditors, which actively determines the orientations or the standpoint relating to the action of the regional rooms of the accounts, which coordinates the action of those, which ensure the integration of information and direct possibly the standpoint of controlling, in particular with regard to certain nominations or of possible lawful or legislative evolutions.

What does not want to say that they do not integrate the opinions or recommendations of the other magistrates. The lawful or legislative texts, their organization, the weight of the history, their competences and their capacities, the position of the Court and the rooms within the French politico-administrative building confers to them a measurable influence upon their engagements or their public standpoint.

Mrs Helene Gisserot, Attorney General close the Court of Auditors, had recalled besides, during her hearing by the senators, Thursday June 5, 1997, the history of the vehicle inspection operated by the regional rooms of the accounts^66(*). And that this one, of 1835 to 1982, following the activity of the councils of prefecture, 1807 to 1835, had been carried out by the Court of Auditors.

The piloting of certain numbers action is done however in network, which reinforces the possibilities of reactions and adaptation of the organization.

And this all the more easily as progress of computerization^67(*) and the setting-up of an Internet site common to the whole of the jurisdictions of the accounts and accessible to the public, of a specific site Intranet to each room and of a extranet common to all the jurisdictions, this progress technical accompanied the setting-up by an organization based on the collegial structure and by the formulas by commissions or committees which can be inter or intra-rooms and which can also integrate members of the Court.

Thus the regional room of the accounts of High-Normandy set up a commission of the methods which allows to reflect if necessary on particular topics, the such financial analysis.

Always under the crook of the President of the room : «I preserve the presidency of the commission of the methods... One launched a seminar interns on the financial analysis... If not the other commissions are chaired by the President of Section...

Thus that, it is related to control itself, and I have another function which is that of the management of the room.... I am Member of the equal technical Commission in the center.... The authority of partnership with the trade unions... The assistants have specific problems... The last part of my external activities, they are the exits.... When one is a jurisdiction autonomous and founded on the secrecy, one may find it beneficial to leave outside. »^68(*)

The presidents of room are automatically members of the Court of Auditors, which means that it is them which determine the notation and thus the advance of the magistrates. In addition, it is the Court of Auditors which coordinates the activity of the regional rooms of the accounts and which provides the interface with the government.

Lastly, they are the presidents of rooms which control the diffusion of the final letters of observation, by rewriting if necessary the contents of these letters intended for the audited and controlled communities.

« There is the program... I chair deliberated. The plenary section ..... I sign all the letters of observations and I do not delegate... I sign also the judgments... By prudence »^69(*).

by a hierarchy directed by the members of the Court of Auditors. This situation is at the same time a constraint and a resource for the financial magistrates.

A resource because the homogeneity of body of the persons in charge is one of the guarantors of the capacity of defense of the interests of the regional rooms but also a constraint the members have de facto of the means of defending in a legitimate way the stakes and the goals of the institution.

As we saw through the various brought back talks, the representation of the interests of the regional rooms of the accounts are thus « monopolized » (symbolically) by the members of the Court of Auditors, because it is them which hold the hierarchical positions most prominent, and the most projecting phenomenon thus relates to the management of the public affairs :

In this case, the relation between the Court and the rooms are not that hierarchical of the double degree of jurisdiction. It is transverse and depends on the voluntary participation of the rooms ....... Our room of High-Normandy is very committed in these collective steps : we take part in investigations in the hospital sector, the management of waste, the RMI, the Casinos and soon the vocational training »^70(*)

This institutional control operated by the members of the Court of Auditors flashes back on the possibilities of professional trajectory of the magistrates.

Agnès Karbouche comes originally from the Regional Institutes of Administration (WILL GO). She was already tallies A but she passed magistrate only recently.

Remi Janner comes initially from the tax authorities where it exerted the functions of listener of the services. Mr. Jacques Pages, President de Section, have just known a promotion since he passed to this rank when he was a magistrate with the regional room of Aquitaine. But promotion remains limited to a small perimeter of stations. Even if, as underlines it one of them, « it is not interdict to go to see elsewhere ... Banking house, specialized in the financings with the local communities... in the companies... One can always resign of the administration... And then it there with the possibility of creating a cabinet of studies or of joining a cabinet of studies... Customers should be constituted «

III- THE FINANCIAL MAGISTRATE OF THE REGIONAL ROOM OF THE ACCOUNTS IN THE SYSTEM OF FRENCH REGULATION POLITICO-ADMINISTRATIVE

On a side, elected officials of the Nation finding themselves equipped with new competences, having from now on to cooperate in the majority of the cases with the services of the State to conclude the projects of infrastructures and regional plannings and continuing to be driving in the economic development their territories, to which a principle of responsibility is allotted, according to which the political projects, through the local public actions and which is seen confirming, a posteriori, accuracy of its actions undertaken. As for a company and its auditors, which certifies annually, results of the companies.

However, the political territories are not the places of markets like the others. The local political leaders, after technical adjustments accepted by the whole of the parts, are increasingly reticent. It is that, since ten years, the central authorities and the political powers the conditions of control of the public accounts tightened, in particular because of spectacular political scandals, which touched, without exception, the whole of the political spectrum of the Nation.

Publicity made around the letters of observation and spectacular development of the policies of evaluation made the elected officials territorial sourer in front of than they estimate to be, on the bottom, an interference of civils servant in their businesses of public men, appreciation surdéterminée by the characteristics of the organizations to which they deal, the invulnerability of which they enjoy and differences of behaviors from one room to another

The politico-financial scandals and the real will of the majority of the municipal officials to follow policies salubrious and free from negative repercussions do not make them forget that they do not have many means of retortions vis-a-vis magistrates who are often their only countervailing powers.

Under the eye of a center which probably takes care of not envenimer the reports/ratios of political forces, the involved parts, not having the possibility of influencing the rules enacted by the center (for multiple reasons), are devoted to permanent strategies of adjustment, taking into account the resources available. The elective dies, the regroupings of elected officials, associations of advisers or the trade unions of magistrates are as many means, geared down by the office plurality of the mandates or the superposition of the networks to position compared to the common stakes of the multiple local systems of action. Admittedly, there is fragmentation of the territories but there is also, and especially, a regrouping of the stakes which defines the current positions.

The use of the concepts of networks of public policies will be used to us as referents in order to elucidate the recent evolutions. The actors mobilize, each one with the ell of their own constraints, their own resources in order to weigh in the processes of coordination which created, in fragmented and moving environments, thus disturbing rational anticipations founded on specific systems of values.

COMPARATIVE STEP OF THE RECENT POLITICO-ADMINISTRATIVE EVOLUTIONS

[1) Various levels of the Public action : the European example

TYPES OF INTERVENTIONS

REGIONAL- ROOM

NATIONAL

EUROPEAN

MONETARY POLICY AND BUDGETARY

FINANCINGS OF PROXIMITY

INTERDEPENDENT SAVING

BUDGET POLICY

WITHIN A COORDINATED FRAMEWORK

COMMON MONETARY POLICY

BUDGET POLICY COORDINATION

TAX HARMONIZATION

SOCIAL RELATIONS, SOCIAL, EMPLOYMENT POLICY PROTECTION

ANIMATION BASIN OF EMPLOYMENT

CREATION OF LOCAL PUBLIC JOBS

SOCIAL PROTECTION

REGULATION OF THE CONTRACT OF EMPLOYMENT

COLLECTIVE AGREEMENTS SUPPORTING A REGULATION SALATIALE

LAW THE LABOR EUROPEAN

SOCIAL DIARY

STRUCTURAL POLICIES

LOCAL DEVELOPMENT

LOCAL INFRASTRUCTURES OF NETWORK

DEFINITIONS OF THE BUDGETARY PRIORITIES

REGIONAL PLANNING

STANDARDS, RESEARCH, COMMUNITY INFRASTRUCTURE, POLITQIUE COMMERCIAL AND OF COMPETITION (EUROPEAN PUBLIC UTILITY)

STRUCTURAL FUNDS

MEDICAL POLICIES AND OF THE ENVIRONMENT

MANAGEMENT OF WATER

COLLECT WASTE

MEDICAL STANDARDS OF PROCESSING WASTE

POLICIES OF ENERGY SAVING

EUROPEAN MEDICAL STANDARDS

MANAGEMENT OF INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS

MANAGEMENT OF THE CONFLICTS

Thanks to this table, we can realize, in opened economy, at constant institutions, and from the European point of view, of the stakes related to the territorialisation^71(*).

The territories deal with the operational installation of the territory, except when they cannot it, in which case, as for the numerical grid, the State passes from engagements with private operators, and the local development.

They are also vector of economic and social development. If the role of the State tends to weaken, it is that this one strongly contributed to saw the branches on which it had sat. European construction , the market, universalization, the deregulation are as many phenomena come from « high ». From a monolithic-hierarchical State, we passed at one time during which the State has a pallet of varied tools allowing him, remotely, to control the fundamental economic ones and to guarantee social solidarity. Decentralization is not, strictly speaking a tool, especially if one considers the history of the French administration, but its current operating mode, with processes of partial or final dispossessions, takes part of this phenomenon.

In addition, with the existence of the Area tending to being a strong autonomous political unit, the room became an important pivot of the development. The control of the administrative and technocratic stakes thus remains strong since that it conditions to some extent the local political scene, itself stamps of a certain economic development, since the territories can be found in competition for the attribution of resources allowing the units economic to carry out discriminating choices. The example of the installation of Toyota with Valencians or a Mercedes Factory in the Area of Nancy [to manufacture the cars « Swatch »] is an illustration of these mechanisms.

[2) Evolutions of the paradigms related to public control

For Sylvie TROSA^72(*), General Rapporteur with the General Council of the Evaluation, there is currently a concept of culture of the result which results in forms of budgeting by results.

One realized that the concept of objectives raised of agonistic processes, which, by derivation, the concept of results pushed, making it possible to lead more easily to a decision or a budget.

The step specialist in comparative literature which it took relates to the Anglo-Saxon countries, the Scandinavian countries, Singapore, the Philippines. Among the tendencies which it distinguishes, it indicates in particular that of the return of the State incarnated by the school of the new contractualism with steps based on the exchange, listening, of the reciprocal rights and obligations.

Two great evolutions are also indicated since we would have passed from a play of lego on the institutional structures to a work on the system consisting in making function various reforms together (budget, evaluation, benchmarking, decentralization, etc.) according to a strategic postulate to leave the citizen to change the structures.

Then, there would be strategic reflections to carry out on the services to deliver, the way of managing the human and material means, the tools of communication to be implemented. Public management becomes prevalent here in measurement or it makes it possible to think and act rationally on clearly built objects. The tendency is here with the simplification of the objectives and the indicators, with the use of the budget like stamps systems of indicators and the use of reliable information systems and little complexes and the use of systems of evaluations in order to measure the repercussions on the environment^73(*).

The administrative reforms which go in the same direction allow moreover a comparison at the international level^74(*) and one assists, as in the French case, with the development of the principle of responsibility with generalization for controls a posteriori. The majority of the countries thus enormously worked on the evaluation and the responsibility within the framework for the orientations stated above.

[3) Jurisdictional control versus the system of the Audit

However, of the differences remain between the various models, between jurisdictional control with the Frenchwoman and the Anglo-Saxon audit : « You have in fact two great systems. One which is the system of the audit, which is the English system, more fixed on certification and then the system with the Frenchwoman, who is jurisdictional control, that one divides with some countries, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Spain ........ In the system of public accounts, you have a judgment of the accounts which is not a certification ..... There is nevertheless a judgment on their behaviors, on the quality of controls which they exerted.... It is a very particular mission... The Anglo-Saxon audit is more, is much closer to the systems of certification »^75(*).

Footbridges were installation in order to compare the methods. It is the case for example with the creation of the organization of the regional institutions of external control of the finance public (EURORAI), created in 1992. « One of my colleagues went to England to see how they make for the control of the hospitals... One approaches the techniques of Audit... We have contacts with these people-there [auditors] to know how they operate... We are less and less locked up in our manner of making.... The evolution of the control of management in is a proof... We integrated efficiency, the effectiveness... It is also one of our concern of knowing how are spent the public funds »^76(*).

THE SYSTEM OF LOCAL ACTION IN THE POLITICAL ARENA

[1) Local public problems

Some local examples, taken in the local press Norman, illustrate the types of situations met by the financial magistrates.

That can be the case of a budgetary problem. At the beginning of 2000, the board of directors of the hospital of Le Havre had refused to vote the budget and had retransmitted the object of the dissension to the regional room of the accounts, because of the deficit « structural of the establishment » and in order to stigmatize the absence with financial solutions.

Let us take the case of the management of the commune of Bridge-Audemer, reported by the Awakening of October 2, 1996, illustrated by the skids related to the construction of a sporting complex : non-observance of the procedure of invitation to tender, misses transparency on the decision-making process of the company charged to carry out the complex, nonconformities of work and non-observance of the initial schedule of conditions. Moreover, work exceeded the initial estimate, heavy on the debt of the commune.

According to the terms of the report/ratio produced by the magistrate of the accounts and brought back in the newspaper : « Thus the debt was at 82,5 million francs at December 31, 1991 and approached, the following year, of the 100 million francs. It reached 10.653 francs then per capita, that is to say close to the double of the national average (5.717 francs) and of the regional average (5.484 francs) for the communes belonging to the same layer of population. »

And the report/ratio to specify, a little further : « Until 1995, the products of operation did not make it possible to cover the totality of the financing of the refunding and operating costs of the debt, of or margin of self-financing running a negative. In addition, the mobilization of the resources intern was not sufficient to ensure the community a capacity of self-financing of its investments ».

The control of the management of the city or the community often makes it possible to highlight errors or embezzlements. The echoes, on September 19, 2000, reports a letter of observation emanating from the regional room of the accounts, in which the magistrates would have belonged to « anomalies of management in the construction of a carpark of 535 places in the university regional hospital complex of Rouen (CHUR) .......... The CRC notes that this assembly has « license to proceed, without legal enabling and call with competition, the realization of the labor market », whose total cost rose to 27 million francs ». Once the noted damage, it does not remain any more with the community but to assume a plan of austerity which sanctions the liability or to call directly upon the basket of the State.

For the commune of Valley-of-Reuil, subjected to a financial rectification, the conclusions of the financial liability seem positive, according to the remarks reported by the journalist of « Paris-Normandy », on April first, 2000. For Bernard Amsallem, the mayor : « The strongest difficulty was lived by the inhabitants and in particular the owners who saw the land taxes increasing considerably. This rise of tax could have been avoided if the rectification had really been done in seven years ». « The rise in the local impositions brought 4,6 million francs as of the end 1998 ..... Under the ministry for the interior, the State granted 4,6 million francs of exceptional subsidies.

As for the deputy François Loncle, it is delighted especially « to see the city preserving the European funds and to take an interesting option towards a forthcoming intercommunality ». The liability was 37 million francs. The installation of an interdepartmental mission, animated by the prefect Thierry Klinger, made it possible to maintain the plans of economic and social development while making fall down the liability on levels compatible with the way of life of the community.

Also, the elected officials, vis-a-vis the production of the regional rooms of the accounts, are perplexed. Because it is at the same time a resource for the applicants with the armchairs of the municipal officials in place and a constraint, because it will be necessary well to manage a problem arrived on the public scene.

Witness of this prospect, animated debates of the town council of Rouen, published in « Paris-Normandy » on September 20, 2000, between the former mayor, François Gautier and the new one, Yvon Robert. « Battles of figures punctuated by the graphs (impromptu ?) from the mayor, one passed to the lower blows, each one endeavouring to find defects in the armor of the adversary : « you made carry out one audit of kindness in 1995 to blacken the table » François Gauthier affirmed before exhuming a report/ratio of the CRC of 1996 stressing that the SIVOM had carried out several operations on the building site of the subway without invitation to tender....In his answer, Yvon Robert deplored the recourse of Bertrand Bellanger to the late ones : « what makes it possible to occult the debate and to reject unworthiness on the others ». Returning on the subway, the mayor affirmed that its predecessor had quite simply sabotaged the file « for not that the Socialists can use it in the countryside of 1995 ».

[2) Relations between the room and the Prefects

Of then the disappearance of the supervision, the prefect controls a posteriori that the acts of the local communities and their publicly-owned establishments are in conformity with legality. This legality must be external and internal, and if it is not respected, the prefect submits in front of the qualified administrative jurisdiction.

But the capacity of the prefect goes beyond since it to faculty to consider the illegality minor and not to submit the accused act or not to exert its faculty of authority.

The prefect thus has a room for appreciable maneuver, which could not miss causing the reactions of the CRC, which not being able to exert pressure on the representative of the State, often recalls to the directors the legal provisions into force.

In addition to the capacity of operation of the prefect, giving flexibility to the system, the legal provision can be moving, according to jurisprudence made up.

Nevertheless, the true control of legality is thus subordinated to the transmission of the acts concerned while at the same time anything would not prevent the CRC from coming to a conclusion about the legality of the acts of the institutions concerned.

By by-effect, the dissonances between the various administrative bodies often cause violent reactions in the elected officials, who do not include/understand the differences in appreciations between the Prefect and the CRC, and which it finds, for example, in the letters of observations, and yet which do not have contentious faculty.

What also causes dissensions between the prefectoral body and the regional rooms. « I.e. they [prefects] will see, will pass to the control of legality all the acts of the community, therefore its markets, the recruitment of its personnel, etc. It is the control of legality which replaces the supervision. [the prefect with faculty to submit with the administrative court, MT], the Prefect, in his role of regulation, will avoid multiplying the dispute. In order not to bottle MT with the dispute... Us, one can perfectly perceive irregular acts but which nevertheless passed a filter... Good that, it is a problem of articulation of the operation of the control of legality. It is one of the sources of irritation of the elected officials... they were believed in safety and they are not there »^77(*).

[3) The regional room and the legal judge

Another potential actor of the relations existing between a CRC and its environment, the legal judge. Because the offenses concerned with penal escape the authority obviously from the CRC. In the report/ratio 1995, it is even specified that the qualification of the facts belongs to the legal authority. For as much, the relations enter the two authorities can be consubstantial because the legal judge can be petitioning of information, following the publication of letters of final observations or extracts published by the press. Thus, on the cases which can be qualified the punishable one :

« The transmissions which we have fact carried all on stories of public market. In which physical people and morals were implied... That being, the transmissions which one makes with the penal parquet floor are not very numerous, there are 2, 3 of them per annum. One is not in midday, God thank you »^78(*).

THE INTEGRATION OF THE STAKES AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL

[1) A political process which contributed to solidify the perimeter of intervention of the regional rooms of the accounts

Originally, nothing let predict of such an evolution. The law of January 5, 1988 can be regarded as being technical, since it made slip the control of the small accounts under the supervision of the Treasurer General Payer and relieved at the same time the activity of the regional rooms of the accounts.

In fact the politico-financial scandals contributed to reorganize the landscape, the such Urba-Graco business, or the case of the town of Angouleme like that of Nice, since it is because of the action of the regional magistrates that the former mayor escaped. More recently and like confirming the recent evolution, work of the regional room of Island-of-France made it possible to highlight serious irregularities relating to the making of public market at the level of the area Island-of-France^79(*).

Indeed, the law n°90-55 of January 15, 1990, comprises a fundamental innovation insofar as it poses the principle of the communication at the assembly deliberating on the final observations formulated by the regional rooms of the accounts within the framework of the examination of the management of the local communities. We are here relatively far from the processes of adjustments between the policy and the administrative ones, such as they were held before with the reform of 1982.

Indeed, in measurement the results of the control of management are from now on public, that upsets all the local political systems. However, the procedure, if it is contradictory, does not envisage a recourse in front of any appelate jurisdiction, when well even it is envisaged a contradictory procedure.

In fact, the local councillor is seriously disturbed, because publicity induces a distortion on the local political market, and its usual official relay, the prefect, can to any more be him of no utility. In addition, the law of January 29, 1993, relating to the prevention of the corruption and the transparency of the economic activities to reinforced certain rules of applicable procedures in front of the regional rooms of the accounts and that of February 8, 1995 reinforced the capacities of the financial jurisdictions on the deputy public services. In addition, the jurisprudence of the Council of State could contribute to consolidate the perimeter of intervention of the rooms^80(*). Lastly, the legislator reaffirmed his will to track the least process of expenditure of the public funds, by the law of April 12, by renewing the obligations of conventions, when the communities subsidize associations or companies mixed investment (SEM). This measurement aims clearly what is called differently « satellites ».

[2) The Senate like aggregation of the local political claims and receptacle of the capacities of political integration

The large preserving room, to take again an expression of Thiers dating from last century, is indirectly made the echo directly or (in particular via many associations of local councillors) of the claims, recriminations or critical observations of the activity of the regional rooms of the accounts.

Witness of this coalescence of interest, the report/ratio n° 520 of the Senate, heading « REGIONAL ROOMS OF THE ACCOUNTS. A dialog essential to the service of the local democracy » subtitle « Committee of supply- Commission of the Laws . Common working group on the regional rooms of the accounts «.

As recalled by J.C. Thoenig^81(*), the relation between the State and the local communities changed considerably since 1981. « The change passes from now on by the structures » and in fact, the study of its system of action would probably make it possible to see, starting from the former studies^82(*), the changes generated by the various legislative and administrative provisions, tending, a priori, to validate the assumptions defended by some on « territorialisation » with work on the hexagonal territory^83(*).

This assumption of territorialisation is more relevant but it does not call into question the diagrams of political integration proposed by the French political system. Because of the characteristics of the French elective system, office plurality of the mandates and distribution of competences and attributions between the two rooms of the French model, one can here legitimate to consider, have regard with the position of the senators and the quality of the speakers, that the report/ratio testifies in a clear way and legitimates position of a majority of local councillors against the regional rooms of the accounts. This action can be regarded as a regrouping of the possibilities of expression of the local governments.

In a general way, the elected officials do not have to complain about decentralization and praises even their assessment. Thus, on page 96 of the report/ratio, : « Economic and social actors of foreground, the local communities also appear in their near total, like well managed entities, in spite of the rise of the incompressible expenditure, explosion of the welfare expenditure, transfers of competences badly compensated and moderate progression of the contests of the State. Thus the debt of the local communities, which rises to 825 billion francs, remained stable : it has represented, for more than 20 years, approximately 10% of the GDP.

This debt is equivalent to less than one year of the total of the local budgets, whereas the State should devote two years and seven months of its budget to refund its debt which rises to 4.100 billion francs. Moreover, the local communities released, in 1997, thanks in particular to an active and warned management of their debt, a capacity of financing also to 0,20% of the GDP.

This excellent result contrasts with « against-performances » of the State and the organizations of social security which posted a deficit equivalent to 3,2% of the GDP. It is the good management of the local communities which made it possible France to be qualified for the euro. »

However, one of the major problems arising to the elected officials relates to the letters of observation relating to the management of the organizations, establishments or associations controlled.

[3) Differentiated requests for adaptation

Thus, the budgetary control, allowing a legal monitoring of the adoption of the budget, is very well accepted because the mechanisms installed, in particular the possibilities of sasine, probably make it possible to solve problematic situations. In a general way, if they criticize the problems involved in the articulation of competences between the Prefects and the magistrates, they wish only positive improvements here, and even if they wish to create a legal pole of competence around the Prefect (that obviously, they prefer), they especially wish to be secured against « the legal insecurity », while creating, why not departmental agencies gathering the parts concerned.

A second group of reproaches can be distinguished concerning the asymmetry of treatment of the local communities, which are not the same ones from one room to another. Paid to their manpower, the senators have to even ask thereafter, and without success, an increase in the means.

Much more problematic is the case of the examination of management since a many elected officials complain some, have regard to the public character of the letters of final observations.

The magistrates would have thus evil to distinguish control from regularity (the term of reference) of the control of opportunity, to proscribe, since they suppose a value judgment on political projects.

However, and the elected officials underline it them-even, because of the variety of the legal situations, the absence of consensus on the perimeter of application of the concept of regularity, the magistrates can be brought to make assessments which do not take account of the local context.

Shovel-mix, the elected officials also reproach the absence of criteria common to the interventions of the rooms, a contradictory procedure limited, deprived in fine of possibility of recourse [not of acts making objection, not authority of call], and the absence of true concrete recommendations in order to solve the problems mentioned. As, the elected officials propose as the control of management evolves to true to that making it possible the community to be pressed on a genuine tool of decision-making aid.

They especially and are most probably irritated not to have any source of recourse in front of the capacities of examination of management held by the regional rooms of the accounts, whereas their foreign colleagues have even faculty to name the persons in charge for the public Audit.

[4) Depth of the networks of public action

In an environment hypercontraint, characterized by the impossibility of the actors of changing the fundamental legal provisions directly, how can they thus react. We here will support we on the networks of public action in order to have an approach differentiated from the activity of the State and « like descriptive tool of a fragmented State »^84(*).

From the analyzes formulated by Rhodos^85(*) and which relate to the analysis between the national center and the local peripheries to Great Britain and the model of Wilks and Wright^86(*), we wish to take again some of the postulates formulated by these authors in order to clarify the relations between the actors of the local system of action. Rhodos postulates in particular the dependence of the organizations with respect to the resources of other organizations, the necessary exchange of resources in the achievement of the objectives of the organization, the importance of a potential of relative capacity and a level meso which establishes the link between the macro one and the microphone.

Wilks and Wright laying the stress, in an industrial world, on the importance of the social networks and the fact that the communities of public policies and the networks of public policy become processes of connection allowing in a systemic way the information flow and integration of the problems.

Moreover, as Andy Smith underlines it^87(*), in France, the office plurality of the mandates makes it possible to return the networks of very powerful elected officials, for example, thanks to the relaunching of the Association of Presidents de General Conseils, but one could here also quote the Association of the Mayors of France or wonder about the place of the Parliament of the districts and communities of France, directed at the time of the hearings carried out by the Senate, by Marc Censi.

Without looking further into the subject, let us note that all these groupings are represented by men placed on the right of the political chess-board, but by absence of analysis and thus of data, we will abstain from referring in our analysis there.

How the coordination of the actors in^88(*) a system locked by the rules of the game is practiced then enacted by the center ?

Admittedly, the organization of the systems of interests is marked by the centralism and corporatism, but it by no means prevents the actors from taking part in the system of action in order to protect what they estimate to be their interests.

Gerald Lehmbruch^89(*), giving a progress report on the diversity of the analyzes relating to the organization of the administrative strategies, notes that certain authors underline the characteristic of the French case, marked by the centralism and corporatism. Thus, the problems of coordination within a sector has fine to solve problems or related to topics put on diary, would run up against the weight of the elites and the institutional structures.

For as much, and in spite of the recent evolution, which saw changing the relationship between being able and territories, and even if the public action is flexible, can one for being as much on its fragmented and dubious character^90(*) ?

In the table which follows and which try to model the possibilities of action in network of the various actors of the local system of action, we tried to highlight their possibilities of action.

[5) Synoptic table of the networks of actors related to the system of action

DEFINITION OF THE ACTORS

TYPE OF NETWORK

CHARACTERISTIC OF THE NETWORK

AUTONOMY OF THE NETWORK

THRUST FORCE OF THE NETWORK

LOCAL COMMUNITIES

ELECTIVE DIE

THE COMMUNITY OF NATIONAL AND LOCAL PUBLIC POLICY

STABILITY, MEMBERS STRICTLY SELECTED ON CRITERIA OF STATUTE, LIMITED HORIZONTAL ARTICULATION, EVOLUTION AT THE MACRO LEVEL

STRONG AUTONOMY BASED ON SECTORAL INTERESTS AND SETS OF THEMES.

POSSIBILITY OF DEFINITION OF THE STAKES AND THE GOALS OF THE BRANCH OF INDUSTRY.

POWERFUL. BONDS IN FAVOR ; SOCIÉTAUX BONDS ; POSSIBLE REDUCTION OF THE RESOURCES OF THE ELECTIVE DIE EVEN GOVERNMENTAL; STRONG CAPACITY OF MOBILIZATION ; ACCESS AT THE MACRO LEVEL, MARGINAL POSSIBILITY TO CHANGE THE RULES OF THE GAME

LOCAL COMMUNITIES

DIE ADMINSTR - ATIVE AND PROFESSIONAL

NETWORK IS PROFESSIONAL ; POSSIBILITY OF ACTION SET OF THEMES

STABILITY ; MEMBERS SELECTED ON CRITERIA OF A PROFESSIONAL NATURE ; STRONG HORIZONTAL ATICULATION. ARTICULATION MICRO/MÉSO THEN MÉSO/MACRO WITH THE CRC

STRONG.

BOUND TO DEFENSE OF THE SOCIO-PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS.

WEAK.

NO POSSIBILITIES OF CHANGING THE RULES.

POSSIBILTÉ TO INTERVENE ON THE PERIMETERS OF EXPERTISES

ROOMS REGIONAL OF THE ACCOUNTS

CENTRAL DIE

PRESIDENTS OF ROOM AND CORRESPONDING TO THE COURT

NETWORK IN PROFESSIONAL MATTER ;

POSSIBILITY OF ACTION SET OF THEMES RESTRICTED TO THE BODY OR OPENED WITH THE WHOLE OF THE MAGISTRATES

VERY STRONG STABILITY

SELECTION ON SCHOOL AND PROFESSIONAL CRITERIA ; HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL ARTICULATION ; ARTICULATION MACRO MÉSO/ ;

VERY STRONG.

DEFENSE OF THE INTERESTS OF THE BODY

DEFENSE OF THE INTERESTS OF THE INSTITUTION

CAPACITY HAS TO DEFINE THE GOALS AND THE STAKES OF THE SECTOR

STRONG

POSSIBILITY OF INFLUENCING THE CHANGES OF THE RULES, OF MODIFYING THE INTERNAL ORGANIZATION, OF CAUSING CHANGES OR NOMINATIONS, OF USING INTERDEPARTMENTAL OR INTERGOVERNMENTAL NETWORKS.

REGIONAL ROOMS OF THE ACCOUNTS

PRINCIPAL DIE

MAGISTRATES AND COMPARABLE

NETWORK IN PROFESSIONAL MATTER ; POSSIBILITY OF ACTION SET OF THEMES

STRONG STABILITY.

SELECTION ON CRITERIA, SCHOOL, PROFESSIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE ; PRIMARILY HORIZONTAL ARTICULATION

STRONG

DEFENSE OF THE INTERESTS OF THE PROFESSION. STRONGLY MAJORITY TRADE UNION OF THE MAGISTRATES (SMJ - 80% OF THE MAGISTRATES)

WEAK

CAPACITY LIMITED TO THE BODY OF THE MAGISTRATES.

NOT E POSSIBILITY DIRECT OF ACCESS AT THE MACRO LEVEL BUT POSSIBILITY OF USING THE NETWORKS SETS OF THEMES.

NATIONAL POSITION, LOCAL POSITION : EXAMINATION OF MANAGEMENT TO THE EVALUATION OF THE PUBLIC POLICIES

It is now a question of attaching the analysis of the capacities of mobilization of the actors to the cleaving stakes of the sector in which they evolve/move.

[1) A magistrate is not Préfet : two bodies of the king

It is at the time of the establishment of this report/ratio that the most eminent representatives of the institution of the accounts and the representatives of the prefectoral body could define their position. Mr. Pierre Joxe, President of the Court of Auditors, had thus the occasion to explain that the articulation between the control of legality and the control of management was not very satisfactory.

Joel Thoraval, Prefect of the Area Island-of-France, President of the association of the prefectoral body, also underlined to him the complexity of the interactions between the financial magistrate and the territorial representative of the State for financial control. However, it added that the regional rooms played a part growing in the regulation of decentralization, thus contributing to reinforce the feeling of legal insecurity among the elected officials, dependant on the double constraint, legal and financial. It nevertheless recognized that the prefects had a discrétionnaire capacity of appreciation of the irregularities and that the Prefect had « to take account of local realities ».

As it is seen, the position of the representative of the Prefects is not exactly same as that of the representative of the financial magistrates. It is true that the institution of the rooms is recent and that it quickly evolved/moved. Remain that all the actors have on this occasion, in particular under the impulse of the elected officials, become aware of the slip towards more complex financial problems. Like recalled it Maître De Castelnau during its hearing, external financial controls at the European level will do nothing but reinforce the legitimacy of bodies of independent financial controls.

[2) The control of management or the evaluation of the public policies ?

For Mrs Danièle Lamarque^91(*), « the examination of management covers the axes of control usually described in the international terminology with the audit by the triptych with « 3rd » : economy, efficiency and effectiveness ....... the checking of efficiency (best services at the best cost) hardly starts to be essential. That of the effectiveness (quantification of the rendered service and degree of achievement of the objectives) is still with the outline ................... Management and its control thus have to follow the same evolution, from legal and financial safety towards the follow-up of the performances and the results. The evaluation of the realization of a sporting complex, it is not only the insurance which construction was regularly led : it is also to appreciate a management, means, users, a policy, effects on the life of the city ".

Madam the President is particularly implied in this step aiming at generalizing of the principles of evaluation of the public policies, and it constitutes even a kind of spearhead, since itself made of the National Council of the Evaluation, in membership of the Court of Auditors, which was set up in February 1999 and of which the goal is precisely to develop these problems by integrating the whole of the territorial actors and by multiplying the comparative analyzes^92(*).

This tendency to the diffusion of the model of evaluation of the public policies and it is accepted by the majority of the actors of the system of action because it corresponds to a need for transparency and effectiveness of the public funds. « François Storeroom, charged with the Commission of the methods of the regional Rooms of the accounts, prefers to answer for a precise and quantified example : the last control carried out by the CRC Ile- of-France on the trade union of water of this area made it possible four million inhabitants to save 50 centimes per consumed cubic meter of water.

The control of the room indeed led to the renegotiation of the contract binding the trade union to its service provider with, with the key, 133 million francs of economies, reflected partly on the invoice of subscribed »^93(*).

The intervention of the regional room of the Countries of the Loire on the cultural policy of the town of Nantes took part of the same process. And it here interesting to see on which criteria the magistrates carried out their interventions. They initially defined four families of following parameters : evolution on several exercises on behalf of the cultural sector in the budget of the city while trying to explain the noted tendencies ; priorities of the cultural intervention [distribution by sectors] ; financing of the cultural expenditure and the tariff system ; the cost with the user.

Then, the room proceeded to, the examination of the missions and objectives announced ; loads and budgetary yields ; of the frequentation ; tariffing of the service and resources additional ; relations with complementary cultural equipment ; reception of the journalists, for the opera, and them catalogs of exposure, for the museum ; degree of respect of the budgetary charges ; detail of the staff costs.

And one could note the same thing in Germany. The regional room of Saxony thus compared, relative with installations of water treatment, the cost of the possible modes of management (governed or delegation), i.e. it has to proceed to a traditional mission of audit in order to determine if good use of the funds, i.e. the concept of « Been worth-for-Money », respected. John Sherring, of the Audit Commission off England and Wales, summarizes it very well « The local communities cannot be allowed any more to lose money »^94(*).

In France, a first national mission of public evaluation of the policies took place in 1998 with the investigation into the road roadway system of the departments launched by the Court of Auditors.

For Vincent Potter, General manager of the Services, and Jean-Luc Ox, Secretary-general of Rock-on-Yon, who comment on the activities of the rooms, observe that this phenomenon is recent : « It is a direction in which they launch out, the evaluation with the direction full with the term, i.e. to look at the results compared to the laid down objectives and the means implemented. One had already seen that with the study of the CRC High-Normandy on the Bridge of Normandy. But that becomes quasi systematic on the tourist policy and the economic policy. It should be raised that the rooms have a macro-economic approach, whereas, by comparison, the evaluation of the contracts of plan, for example, too often had a microeconomic approach. »^95(*)

[3) Towards a significant evolution of the mode of regulation ?

Admittedly, there is relative evolution of the contents of the missions of the rooms but the phenomenon of the audit remains nevertheless problematic. Because, for much, that would be to denature the initial mission of the magistrates and that would pose far too many problems. The mission of the magistrates is to represent the company in order to require accounts of any public agent of its administration, under the terms of the article of article 15 of the preamble to the constitution. Also, the magistrates are not inevitably of agreement to evolve to a position of council, which does not correspond inevitably to the ideologies of public utility animating the systems of values of the French administration executives.

Pierre Rocca, President of the Trade union of the Financial Jurisdictions (SJF) recognizes, at the time of the Congress held by his trade union in October 1998, that the positions taken by the senators during the establishment of the Amoudry report/ratio are moderate and positive for the rooms^96(*).

However, « We cannot be at the same time advisers and public management auditors. It would be incompatible with the European right most recent which prohibits the mixture of the kinds between judicial offices and function of council. The letters of observations and the debates which precede them often have a teaching effect. We explain the base of our observations, which generally on non-observance, by drift resulting from the practice, the simple rules ».

The financial magistrates thus are not inevitably won over to an evolution of their trades which would not correspond to the true nature of their mission or their perimeter of competence. Moreover, the elected officials of the local or territorial communities, taking again the principle of opportunity always sees evil eye the interventions of prescritive nature. The principles of action of the financial magistrate must be above all of descriptive nature : they must be limited to the enumeration of the facts envisaged by the texts of laws. It is what the elected officials suggest by reformulating the problem of the examination of management.

[4) Integration and not-resolution of problems

Indeed, the local councillors, territorial and senatorial have much advanced in their reflections on the place of the regional rooms of the accounts.

The proposals advanced following the report/ratio n° 520 of the Senate are a good example. One raises in particular the recommendation of a time of six months neutrality, during which no letter of final observation (LOD) could be sent ; a better organization of the rooms in order to avoid any type of discrimination, in any point of the territories ; the possibility of a form of recourse, with the qualification of the LOD (final Letters of Observation) of decisions likely to make objection.

Especially the report/ratio recommends a reformulation of the examination of management, qualified with the article L. 211-8 of the code of the financial jurisdictions, by proposing the terms according to : « The examination of management relates to the regularity of the acts of management and on the saving in means implemented compared to the objectives laid down by the deliberating assembly without these objectives, whose definition concerns the exclusive responsibility for the elected officials, being able themselves to be the subject of observations.

The observations that the regional room of the accounts formulates on this occasion mention the legislative or lawful provisions of which they note the ignorance. They expressly take into account the results of the contradictory procedure with the director of the community concerned.

The relative importance of these observation in the management of the community or the publicly-owned establishment is evaluated. Lastly, they make recommendations on the aspects of the management examined by the room »

[5) The French model of the against-role

The senators can only propose because they do not have any means of pressure on the regional rooms of the accounts. They can in no way of modifying the lawful framework their actions.

As underlines it Bernard Levallois, Public auditor at the Court of Auditors and President of the regional room of the accounts of Alsace, the recent decisions taken by the Council of State leaves of another choice to the authorities only reinforce the legal reliability of the control of legality^97(*), in particular in order to protect the small communes against legal possibilities of insecurity, which is one of the great sources of territorial dissatisfaction.

This reason for legal insecurity and the significant number of communes in France (more than 36.000) had even led the President of the Trade union of the financial jurisdictions, Mr. Pierre Rocca, to propose a reactivation of departmental agencies^98(*) in order to assist the small communes. A contrario, Mr. Rocca is not very favorable to the development of pole of competences commun runs with the prefectoral services, in particular because of the implication of the prefects in the joint projects with the local authorities and because it fears of this fact a diminution of the means allocated with the regional rooms.

It is also a way of answering the one of the proposals of the Amoudry-Oudin report/ratio which recommended possibly a technical aid financial magistrates who would have been attached, within poles of competences also including/understanding other territorial magistrates, with the Prefect. This proposal admittedly emanated from a first report/ratio, suggested by the Council of State in 1993.

The Houssin report/ratio (« On the simplification of the State in its relationships to the local communities ») also a reinforcement of the legal capacities of the decentralized services of the State recommended.

The French system is indeed marked by a strong independence of its system of external control. « In many countries, the external control of the areas is organized and financed by the areas themselves. The persons in charge for the institutions in charge of control, the Presidents [of the German rooms] and of will sindicaturas Spanish or the general inspectors of the provinces of Canada, are all named by the communities which they control.

Being the communes, that it is in England and with the country of Galle or in Holland, they often have the choice of the controller, like a company with the choice of its auditor.

In England and with the country of Galle, the District to that, which is a public institution, is in competition for the control of the communes with the large private cabinets of Audit »^99(*).

In a country marked by the centralism and the absence of politico-administrative experiments marked by the polycentrism, the attempts at reforms suggested fall under a logic of jurisdictional independence. The members of the Court of Auditors thus propose solutions in accordance with their functions and their position within the system of action.

Alain Sérieyx, President of the regional room of Provence-Alp-coast-to azure, public auditor at the Court of Auditors, in 1996, recalled that the function was new and that the formula adopted by the legislator, «particularly fuzzy, allows all interpretations, extensive or restrictive »^100(*) .

However, the presence of legislative or institutional, desired aporias or not by the legislator or the political decision maker, can only consolidate the fundamental role of the authorities or institutions involved, in the measurement or the absence of cleavages is likely to reveal the potential logic of the institutions.

Without intervention of that which can modify the Tables of the Law, these last naturally tend to open out in their own operating mode.

The relations contrasted between the rooms and the elected officials are thus « a question of a perpetual topicality ». The French model is that « against-role^101(*) (countered-rotulus, beside ; « rotulus », role, register : to see, and exploit, of information, beside the examined communities) which is exerted by the rooms, take part of the balance of decentralization.

It is entrusted to an independent jurisdiction, composed of ruling magistrate collégialement, placed apart from the influences, which they are those the representatives and services of the State, or of those of the checked local organizations ».

And especially, the author to reiterate the vocation of this institution, which is that to control the accounts by affirming most strict neutrality in the control of the businesses of which it with the load, while playing the part which is it his in the lighting of certain public choices. The mission of the financial magistrate thus remains loan of this ethos of senior official, of which the vocation serves the Nation as a community and the local communities.

This ideological base remains to be brought back, perhaps, with the characteristic of the construction of the ideology Public utility, become a stake and a legitimate resource, with the wire of the development of the official institutions and intervention of the State. What makes, that today, the institutions, actors or authorities of control draw from this ideology in order to justify their interventions.

Also, surdéterminées by logics of body and the history of a prestigious institution, the solutions suggested can be only one adjustment of the existing provisions, such as they can be conceived and carried out within an institutional space animated by senior officials conscious of their responsibility and their competences.

Gilles Cazenave does not propose particular solutions if it is not a great any more attention given to the exchange, the dialog and publicity.

Pierre Fabre^102(*), President de Section with the regional room of Provence-Alp-Coasts of Azure, would have a solution plus iconoclast which would consist in amalgamating the administrative courts with the CRC. The solution would have the advantage, according to the author, to simplify the French administrative structures, to facilitate the possible ones resort contentious, to avoid conflicts of competence and to create a single body magistrates, interchangeable in the two specialities, administrative or financial.

Bernard Levallois^103(*) recommends two suggestions more in connection with what exists « The first would be to make return to the higher Council regional rooms of the accounts of the accredited representatives of the local authorities » so that they can take part in possible proposals for a reorganization of the rooms. « The second would be to create, near this higher Council, for example, a committee charged to define the standards of control to be exerted by the regional rooms of the accounts ».

Which question is treated by the Commission of the methods, at the Court of Auditors, which does not have any normative capacity and which is not that a simple authority of coordination.

« Even if it is not always easy to say where stops the financial control and where the control of opportunity starts, we must absolutely lean us on the risk of slip towards the control of opportunity, insists Daniel Hoeffel, senator of the Low-Rhine. The local councillors, n the other hand of the transparency of their management, have the right to await the respect of their function ».

Also, for lack of a legal base causing a notable consensus, for Philippe Limouzin-Lamothe, « the financial magistrates ensure themselves of the respect of the legal and lawful framework and check that the obligations of transparency are satisfied. The economic criteria of appreciation come as a second, and a second only »^104(*).

For Roland Laugh, at the time Maire of Strasbourg, « it is necessary to be forwarded to the development of common references, known and accepted of all. Once the practical methods of control well upstream defined, the debate on opportunity will lose of its acuity ».

CONCLUSION.

What can one then say evolution of the examination of management towards the evaluation of the public policies, taking into account the elements structuring the interventions of the magistrates of the courses of the accounts ?

A system of action directed towards a marginal adjustment105(*)

Taking into account the elements which we evoked, the evaluation of the public policies seems well a process of adjustment of the system of action.

From the elements which we evoked and taking into account the characteristics of the system of action connecting directly the three principal actors, namely, the elected official, representative of the territory, the Prefect, representative of the State and person in charge for the control of the action of the State about the territory and, finally the financial magistrate, with whom it fall to track the dysfunctions, the companies screens, diversions of public money or debts disproportionate. These missions of public virtues are registered in the logic of the laws of decentralization.

But in fact the policies started again the process by determining texts of laws, at the beginning of the years 1990, which widened the possibilities of investigation of the regional rooms of the accounts. The heart of target : not the communes which do not have the means of following expensive policies, but cities or the agglomeration, such Angouleme, such Nice, such Limoges, fauteuses of disorders.

Vis-a-vis this tightening of the budgetary and financial constraints, the elected officials organized themselves and organized themselves their defense, whose report/ratio of the Senate is probably the most beautiful illustration.

This one given a progress report on decentralization and prescribed a certain number of measurements, in particular supported by the virtuous behavior of the immense majority of controlled, so as to eliminate the points which obstruct the territorial public action.

Vis-a-vis this regrouping of the territorial political request, the fragmentation of the administrative action, as in echo with the offensives of the local authorities, tends to reabsorb.

The answer of the magistrates

The Court of Auditors gradually sets up devices aiming to re-allocate and better coordinate the action of its magistrates, and this, under the impulse of the Presidents of regional rooms, all members of the Court of Auditors.

The answer is organisational (with the institution of meetings sets of themes or investigation inter-rooms) but it is also ideological.

The elected officials attack on the examination of management and worry about an intrusion without jurisdictional counterpart, which disturbs the local political market and which is added to the legal insecurity, concretely related on the joint application of the principle of legality exerted by the Prefect and to control carried out a posteriori exerted by the regional rooms of the accounts.

For as much, taking into account the positions of the actors, the possibilities offered by the networks and the weight of the institutions concerned, the process of adjustment cannot lead to the arrival of one to that realized according to Anglo-Saxon guns' on the matter. To check the regularity of the accounts, certainly, but the missions of public utility deserve perhaps more consideration than a simple certification, without to carry a value judgment on the objectives.

The evaluation of the public policies concern this logic and it is well the device which is to be set up by the magistrates. As underlines it Patrick Gibert and Marianne Andrault^106(*), the control of management would raise of an entrepreneurial approach, whereas the evaluation of the public policies, worries about the process of realization of the policy like its environmental impact.

As, knowing as the institutional groundwork can be modified only by the political center and that one needs certain exceptional circumstances to do it,

The setting in front of the evaluation of the public policies and the intensification of the horizontal and vertical bonds within the jurisdictional authority can be analyzed like the resultant of a process of adjustment primarily connecting the magistrates and the institutions in which they evolve/move on the one hand ; territorial elected officials and the interests which they assert in addition.

The evaluation thus seems a third relevant way within the process of regulation dynamic of the conflicts of interests connecting the involved parts.

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

TERRITORIAL SOURCES

I still thank the magistrates and the personnel for the regional room to have wanted to answer some questions. Their answers supplemented and enriched the talks or remarks collected by the journalists by the Gazette of the Communes or Local Authorities. I thus thank Mrs Lamarque, President of the room, Mr. Pagès, President of section, Mrs Karbouche, magistrate, Misters Boeton, Janner, Magistrats, Mr. Ruellan, Government Commissioner.

Many information are available and directly accessible thanks to the Gazette from the Communes, which devote in an extremely serious and clear way, reports and articles devoted to the whole of the stakes concerning the territories and the local communities which are there. The personalities questioned are often executives of the territorial public office.

The numbers used and whose references are at the foot of the page are as follows : n°1447, n°1532, n°1482. n° 1491, n°1475, n°1540, 1516, 1535

In addition, we used another excellent magazine, Authorities Local, available near the Institute of Decentralization, located in Boulogne (92). This last place at the disposal of the documents on request. A base of data installed on their Web site allows a selection of the desired documents. ( www.i-decentralisation.com). The articles are qualities and the work of specialists.

Lastly, impossible to circumvent. The comment of the Final Letters of Observation (LOD) by two territorial senior officials. J.L. Ox, V. Potter, «main part of the letters of final observations of the CRC », The Gazette of the communes, the departments, the areas, n°9, March 3, 1997, fasc. n°2, e.g. or that used in this work of March 6 2.000.

SOURCES RELATING TO THE COURT OF AUDITORS AND THE REGIONAL ROOMS OF THE ACCOUNTS

Initially, institutions themselves, in particular by the way of an Internet site of excellent invoice ( www.ccomptes.fr) or by the eminently complete documentation suggested by French Documentation, its bookstore or its room of documentation, with data bases.

Governed of Castelnau, legal consultant to the local communities, and Benedicte Boyer, evoked their impressions in the work : Portrait of the regional rooms of accounts, Decentralization and Local Development, LGDJ, 1997. The work has the merit to highlight the youth of the institution and to give an outline of the environment which reigns in the rooms.

J. Magnet, President of room at the Court of Auditors, the Court of Auditors, Shepherd-Levrault, 1997, presents an intelligent compilation of the framework lawful and legislative of the activity of Beaucoup of works relating to the Court were written by the members of the Court and it would also be necessary to consult the work of C. Descheemaeker, Adviser-Master at the Court of Auditors, the Court of Auditors, French Documentation, 1998 : it is a little more consistent and realistic that the precedent. It takes again the points developed by the Norman magistrates and insists in particular on the importance of ethics and the continuous training for work of the magistrates.

G.Piole, regional rooms of the accounts, coll political local, Local Credit of France, L.G.D.J., 1999. Introductory, quantitative and practical.

ON THE ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION, DEVOLUTION, THE RESOURCES TERRITORIAL

- The works published by the Economic Council of Analysis are impossible to circumvent. They give the tendencies concerning the majority of the stakes, starting from positions external with the operational theater of the administrative world.

« The evaluation with the service of the future », The National Council of the Evaluation, annual report 1999, French documentation, 2.000.

Sylvie Trosa, « Reforms of the State in France and Europe », State and Public Gestion, the Economic Council of Analysis, French Documentation, 1996.

Anne-Marie Leroy, « Administrative reforms in the OECD countries », State and Public Gestion, the Economic Council of Analysis, French Documentation, 1996

G.Gilbert, V.Hespel, « Financial relations between the State and the local communities », State and public management, CAE, Doc. Frenchwoman, 2000, p.64.

Sylvie Hel-Thelier, « Organization of the capacities and public management : a comparison of the European Convention country », State and public Gestion, CAE, Doc. Frenchwoman, 2000.

- The courses lavished by the National Center of remote Education for a License of Administration supported me for the administrative part of the report.

Run Polycopié CNED- Alain Sorbara- unit relating to the administrative institutions of the license of public administration - 2000/2001.

See on this subject S. Verclytte, Devolution in France, French Documentation, 1995. O. Gohin, administrative Institutions, LGDJ, 1998. ; P. Bodineau and Mr. Verpeau, History of decentralization, coll « I That-know ? », PUF, 1997 ; J.B. Auby and J.F. Auby, Right of the local communities, PUF, coll THEMIS, right Public, 1998.

Like it was indicated in a note, the majority of the remarks on the local taxation result from the interventions of Mr. G. Gilbert, at the time of his course professed to the ENS Cachan- DEA Public action and contemporary companies- 2000/2001.

For the financial aspects, countable and administrative, concerned with the local authorities, to also see : J.L. Gousseau, « Finance public : local finances », duplicated course of CNED, unit of the license of public administration, 2000-2001 and A. Sorbara, « Administrative institutions of France », duplicated course of the CNED, unit of the license of public administration, 2000-2001. See also Mr. Bouvier, Local Finances, LGDJ, 1998 ; A. Paysant, local Finances, Basic right PUF, 1993.

THEORETICAL WORKS

- For the explanatory theories or the approaches of the theories of the regulation :

Metamorphoses of the political regulation, under the Management of Jacques Commaille and Bruno Jobert, ED. LGDJ, 1998 and in particular : J.C. Thoenig, « The analytical use of the concept of regulation » ; B. Jobert, « Political regulation : the point of view of a politist » ; E. Fouilleux, « Polycentrism : constraint and strategic resource. The case of the common agricultural policy ». P. Wales, « Regulation, Governorship and Territory ».

L. Kiser and E. Ostrom, « The three world off actions. With metatheorical synthesis off institutional approaches ", E. Ostrom (ED.), Strategics off Political Inquiry, London, 1982.

Under the direction of P. Scales and Mr. Thatcher, Networks of public policies : discusses around the policy networks, Logiques Policies, Harmattan, 1995. One will be able to quote : Andy Smith, « To reintroduce the question of the direction in the networks of public actions ». B. Jouve, « Networks and communities of public policies in action ». G. Lehmbruch, « Organization of the company, strategies administrative and networks of public action ».

Wilks, Wright, Comparative government-industry relations. Western Europe and the United States, 1987.

P. Duran, « Local government. Local government with the government of the territories », course duplicated, ENS Cachan, 2000/2001.

P. Duran, « Public action, political action », duplicated course ENS Cachan, 2000-2001.

P. Duran, J.C Thoenig, « The State and territorial public management », Re-examined French of Political Sciences, 4, 1996.

P. Duran, « Regulation crossed with the generalized interdependence », course duplicated, Direction of Study Government of the territories, DEA Public action, ENS Cachan, 2000-2001.

P. Lange, Mr. Regini, «State, Social Market and Regulation», Cambridge University Near, Cambridge, 1989.

J.C. Thoenig, « The institutional innovation », The Public action, selected Pieces of the review policies and public management (PMP), under the responsibility of François Laced and Jean-Claude Thoenig, ED. Harmattan, Paris, 1996.

J.C. Thoenig, The era of the Technocrats : cases of the Engineers of the Bridges, social Logics, Harmattan, 1986.

J.C. Thoenig, Mr. Crozier, « Regulation of the organized systems. The case of the local system of decision politico-administrative in France », Re-examined French of sociology, 16 (1), January-March 1976.

- Lastly, in the disorder, various works having influenced us or which can have an importance.

M.A. Clipping-rock, « Etatitic evolution of the right like instrument of an economic organization ", State and public management, CAE, Doc. Frenchwoman, 1996.

* ¹ J.C. Thoenig, « The institutional innovation », The Public action, selected Pieces of the review policies and public management (PMP), under the responsibility of François Laced and Jean-Claude Thoenig, ED. Harmattan, Paris, 1996.

* ² Mr. Crozier, J.C. Thoenig, «regulation of the complex organized systems. The case of the local system of decision politico-administrative », Re-examined French of sociology, 16 (1), January-March 1976.

* ³ P. Duran, J.C. Thoenig, « The State and territorial public management », Re-examined French of Political Sciences, 4, 1996.

* ⁴ For the explanatory theories or the approaches of the theories of the regulation : Metamorphoses of the political regulation, under the Management of Jacques Commaille and Bruno Jobert, ED. LGDJ, 1998 and in particular : J.C. Thoenig, « The analytical use of the concept of regulation » ; B. Jobert, « Political regulation : the point of view of a politist » ; E. Fouilleux, « Polycentrism : constraint and strategic resource. The case of the common agricultural policy ».

* ⁵ Mr. Crozier, J.C. Thoenig, « Regulation of the complex organized systems. The case of the local system of decision politico-administrative in France », Re-examined French of sociology, 16 (1), January-March 1976.

* ⁶ P. Duran, J.C Thoenig, « The State and territorial public management », Re-examined French of Political Sciences, 4, 1996.

* ⁷ P. Duran, « Local government. Local government with the government of the territories », course duplicated, ENS Cachan, 2000/2001.

* ⁹ P. Wales, « Regulation, governorship and territory », Metamorphoses of the political regulation, Right coll and company, under dir it. Of Jacques Commaille and B. Jobert, ED. LGDJ, 1998.

* ¹⁰ P. Lange, Mr. Regini, «State, Social Market and Regulation», Cambridge University Near, Cambridge, 1989.

* ¹¹ Sylvie Hel-Thelier, « Organization of the capacities and public management : a comparison of the European Convention country », State and public Gestion, CAE, Doc. Frenchwoman, 2000.

* ¹² See on this subject S. Verclytte, Devolution in France, French Documentation, 1995.

* ¹³ J.C. Thoenig, « the Institutional innovation », The Public action, under the direction of François Laced, ED. Harmattan, 1996.

* ¹⁴ P. Duran, J.C. Thoenig, «the State and territorial public management », Re-examined French of Political Sciences, 4, 1996.

* ¹⁵ L. Kiser and E. Ostrom, « The three world off actions. With metatheorical synthesis off institutional approaches ", E. Ostrom (ED.), Strategics off Political Inquiry, London, 1982.

* ¹⁶ See on these different point : O. Gohin, administrative Institutions, LGDJ, 1998. ; P. Bodineau and Mr. Verpeau, History of decentralization, coll « I That-know ? », PUF, 1997 ; J.B. Auby and J.F. Auby, Right of the local communities, PUF, coll THEMIS, right Public, 1998.

* ¹⁷ At the European level, the area is prosperous and highly respected and is formally consulted before each decision being able to relate to it. A European charter of local autonomy exists and it was ratified by about thirty members of the Council of Europe.

* ¹⁸ The majority of the remarks on the local taxation result from the interventions of Mr. G. Gilbert, at the time of his course professed to the ENS Cachan- DEA Public action and contemporary companies- 2000/2001.

* ¹⁹ Run Polycopié CNED- Alain Sorbara- unit of the license of public administration - 2000/2001.

* ²⁰ G.Gilbert, V.Hespel, « Financial relations between the State and the local communities », State and public management, CAE, Doc. Frenchwoman, 2000, p.64.

* ²³ J.C. Thoenig, P. Duran, «the State and Territorial Public Management», French Review of Political Science, 4, 1996.

* ²⁴ J.C. Thoenig, Mr. Crozier, « Regulation of the organized systems. The case of the local system of decision politico-administrative in France », Re-examined French of sociology, 16 (1), January-March 1976.

* ²⁷ P. Duran, « Public action, political action », duplicated course ENS Cachan, 2000-2001.

* ²⁸ For the financial aspects, countable and administrative, concerned with the local authorities, to see in particular : J.L. Gousseau, « Finance public : local finances », duplicated course of CNED, unit of the license of public administration, 2000-2001 and A. Sorbara, « Administrative institutions of France », duplicated course of the CNED, unit of the license of public administration, 2000-2001. See also Mr. Bouvier, Local Finances, LGDJ, 1998 ; A. Paysant, local Finances, Basic right PUF, 1993.

* ²⁹ G.Piole, regional rooms of the accounts, coll political local, Local Credit of France, L.G.D.J., 1999.

* ³⁰ J.L. Ox and V. Potter, « Activity 1999 of the regional rooms of the accounts », The Gazette of the Communes, supplement, n°1540 of March 6, 2000.

* ³¹ J.L. Ox, V. Potter, «main part of the letters of final observations of the CRC », The Gazette of the communes, the departments, the areas, n°9, March 3, 1997, fasc. n°2.

* ³² Supplement of the Gazette of the Communes of March 6, 2000 devoted to the activity of the regional rooms of the accounts, p.33. - 34.

* ³³ According to L. Kiser and E. Ostrom, « The three world off actions. With metatheorical synthesis off institutional approaches ", E. Ostrom (ED.), Strategics off Political Inquiry, London, 1982.

« Art L. 212-16. - It is instituted the higher Council of the regional rooms of the accounts. This council draws up the promotion table of rank of the members of the body of the regional rooms of the accounts and the short list of these members for the functions of president of regional room. It delivers an opinion on any change of a magistrate. Any draft amendment of the statute defined by this code is subjected for opinion in the higher Council of the regional rooms of the accounts ».

This council is also consulted on any question relating to the organization, the operation or the regional competence of the rooms ».

* ³⁵ J.C. Thoenig, The era of the Technocrats : cases of the Engineers of the Bridges, social Logics, Harmattan, 1986.

* ³⁶ Intervention of Mr. Pierre Joxe, President of the Court of Auditors, Report/ratio of the Senate n° 520, « Regional rooms of the accounts and local councillors », p.201.

* ³⁷ Extracts of the discussion with Mr. Pagès, President de Section with the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ³⁸ This proposal is included in particular in the senatorial Report/ratio relating to the regional rooms of the accounts published in 1998 and presented by J.P. Amoudry and J. Oudin.

* ³⁹ Extracts of the discussion with Mrs Lamarque, President of the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁴⁰ Extracts of the discussion with Mrs Lamarque, president of the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁴¹ Governed of Castelnau, legal consultant to the local communities, and Benedicte Boyer, evoked in the work : Portrait of the regional rooms of accounts, Decentralization and Local Development, LGDJ, 1997, concrete problems being posed with the activity of the rooms : the calendars disturbed by the dubious rate/rhythm of the budgetary controls, the not-compensated departures of certain advisers, the interference of the investigations inter-rooms, but also rotations of the territorial interlocutors who weaken the capitalization of knowledge within the rooms.

* ⁴² Extracts of the discussion with Mr. Ducourt, Assistant of checking to the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁴³ B. Boyer, R. De Castelnau, Portrait of the regional rooms of the accounts, L.G.D.J, 1997. P.34-35

The control of the accounts ; the examination of management ; the re-establishment of the budgets, on request of the representative of the State ; The management in fact, bearing on handling not - authorized public funds

The CRC also intervene in other fields the such market analyzes and delegation of public utility, or even the alarm of the communities shareholders of mixed economy

* ⁴⁶ J.Magnet, Court of Auditors. Institutions associated and regional rooms with the accounts, Shepherd-Levrault, 1996, p. 342 and suiv.

* ⁴⁷ Short speech of Mrs. Danièle Lamarque, Adviser chief clerk at the Court of Auditors, President of the Room. Solemn meeting of the regional room of High-Normandy of February 11, 2000. Extract.

* ⁴⁸ Extracts of the discussion with Agnes Karbouche, magistrate with the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁴⁹ Extracts of the discussion with Mr Ducourt, assistant of checking to the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁵⁰ Extract of the maintenance granted to the Gazette of the Communes, « Trades of the CRC », n°1516 of the 13/09/1999.

* ⁵¹ Extract of the discussion with Mr Ruellan, government Commissioner to the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁵² Extract of the discussion with Philippe Boeton, magistrate with the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁵³ Extract of the discussion with Philippe Boeton, magistrate with the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁵⁵ « Communities- CRC : not with mistrust », The Gazette of the Communes, n°1535 of the 31/01/2000.

* ⁵⁶ B. Boyer, R. De Castelnau, Portrait of the regional rooms of the accounts, L.G.D.J, 1997, p.70.

* ⁵⁷ Extract of the discussion with Mr Ruellan, Government Commissioner to the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁵⁸ Extract of the discussion with Remi Janner, magistrate with the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁵⁹ Extract of the discussion with Jacques PAGES, President of section to the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁶⁰ Extract of the discussion with Commissioner Ruellan the Government, with the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁶¹ Extract of the discussion with Mr Ruellan, Government Commissioner to the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁶² Extract of the discussion with Philippe Boeton, magistrate with the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁶³ Extract of the discussion with J. PAGES, President of section to the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁶⁴ Extracts of the Short speech pronounced by Mrs the President Danièle Lamarque, at the time of the solemn meeting of February 11, 2000.

* ⁶⁵ J. Magnet, President of room at the Court of Auditors, Court of Auditors, Shepherd-Levrault, 1997. Many works relating to the Court was written by the members Court. See also the work of C. Descheemaeker, Adviser-Master at the Court of Auditors, the Court of Auditors, French Documentation, 1998 : it is a little more consistent and realistic that the precedent. It takes again the points developed by the Norman magistrates and insists in particular on the importance of ethics and the continuous training for work of the magistrates.

* ⁶⁶ Intervention of Mrs H. Gisserot, Report/ratio of the Senate n° 520, p.173.

* ⁶⁷ According to the declarations of Mrs Lardinois, Documentalist with the regional room of the accounts of High-Normandy.

* ⁶⁸ Extract of the discussion with Mrs Lamarque, President of the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁶⁹ Extract of the maintenance carried out with Mrs Lamarque, President of the regional room of the accounts of High-Normandy.

* ⁷⁰ Extracts of the short speech pronounced by the president of the room of High-Normandy, Daniele Lamarque. Solemn meeting of Friday February 11 2.000.

* ⁷¹ See the article of P. Wales, « Regulation, Governorship and Territory », Metamorphoses of the Political Regulation, Under Dir. Of J. Commaille and B. Jobert, LGDJ, 1998.

The author evokes the fragmentation of the national companies and the progressive structuring of a political Space, but also the prospects for research in Eastern Europe.

* ⁷² Sylvie Trosa, « Reforms of the State in France and Europe », State and Public Gestion, the Economic Council of Analysis, French Documentation, 1996.

* ⁷³ He would be here relevant to compare current teaching in the university dies dedicated to the training of the senior officials, the ENA or the Political Institutes of Studies, but also the foreign universities which give such trainings, for example the University of London or Bocconi of Milan.

* ⁷⁴ Anne-Marie Leroy, « Administrative reforms in the OECD countries », State and Public Gestion, the Economic Council of Analysis, French Documentation, 1996.

* ⁷⁵ Extract of the discussion with Daniele Lamarque, President of the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁷⁶ Extract of the discussion with Mr Ruellan, government Commissioner to the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁷⁷ Extract of the discussion with Mrs Danièle Lamarque, President of the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁷⁸ Extract of the discussion with Mr Ruellan, Government Commissioner to the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁸⁰ See for example the stop of May 20, 1998 of the Council of State opposing the town of Saint-Dizier to CGE relative with the access of the financial and countable documents by the regional room of the accounts, with regard to the management of water.

* ⁸¹ J.C. Thoenig, « The institutional Innovation », The Public action, under the direction of François Laced, ED. Harmattan, 1996.

* ⁸²Mr. Crozier, J.C. Thoenig, « Regulation of the complex organized systems », Re-examined French of Sociology, DVI/1, p.3-32 ; P. Gremion, Peripheral capacity, Threshold, Paris, 1976.

* ⁸³ P. Duran, « Regulation crossed with the generalized interdependence », course duplicated, Direction of Study Government of the territories, DEA Public action, ENS Cachan, 2000-2001.

* ⁸⁴ Under the direction of P. Scales and Mr. Thatcher, Networks of public policies : discusses around the policy networks, Logiques Policies, Harmattan, 1995.

* ⁸⁶ Wilks, Wright, Comparative government-industry relations. Western Europe and the United States, 1987.

* ⁸⁷ Andy Smith, « To reintroduce the question of the direction in the networks of public actions ». Under the direction of P. Scales and Mr. Thatcher, Networks of public policies : discusses around the policy networks, Logiques Policies, Harmattan, 1995.

* ⁸⁸ B. Jouve, « Networks and communities of public policies in action ». The networks of public policies, discusses around the policy Networks, under dir it. Of P. Logical Wales and Mr. Thatcher, coll Policies, ED . Harmattan, 1995.

* ⁸⁹ G. Lehmbruch, « Organization of the company, strategies administrative and networks of public action ». Under the direction of P. Scales and Mr. Thatcher, Networks of public policies : discusses around the policy networks, Logiques Policies, Harmattan, 1995.

* ⁹⁰ P. Duran, «Of the regulation crossed with the generalized interdependence. The bureaucracy has it a future ? », Group of Analysis of the Public Policies, ENS Cachan, course duplicated, 2000/2001.

* ⁹¹ The Letter of Public Management, n°30, November-December 2000, p.2.

* ⁹² to see in particular « The evaluation with the service of the future », The National Council of the Evaluation, annual report 1999, French documentation, 2.000.

* ⁹⁴ City by the Gazette of the Communes, n° 1482 of the 21/11/1998, p.6.

* ⁹⁷ « Local communities and regional rooms of the accounts : for a partnership », Gazette of the n°1532 Communes of the 10/01/2001, p.10.

* ⁹⁸ « The regional rooms of the accounts cannot be advisers and controllers », The Gazette of the n°1475 communes of the 02/11/1998., p. 31.

* ⁹⁹ Bernard Levallois, President of the regional room of the accounts of Alsace, public auditor at the Court of Auditors, « Local communities and regional rooms of the accounts : for a partnership », The Gazette of the n°1532 Communes of the 10/01/2000, p.10

* ¹⁰⁰ « Regulators or gendarmes of decentralization », Right and Decentralization, Local Authorities n°30, p.58-60.

* ¹⁰¹ Gilles Cazenave, President of the regional room of the accounts of Haute-Loire, public auditor at the Court of Auditors, « How the relations between the regional rooms and the local councillors evolve/move », Right and Decentralization, Local Authorities, n°30, p.46-54.

* ¹⁰² The Gazette of the communes, « Proclamation in favor of the fusion of the CRC and MT »,

* ¹⁰³ The Gazette of the Communes, « Local communities and regional rooms of the accounts : for a partnership », n°1532 of the 10/01/2001, p.10.

* ¹⁰⁴ Extracts of the Gazette of the Communes, n°1482 of the 21/12/1998.

* ¹⁰⁶ P. Gibert, Mr. Andrault, « To control Management or to evaluate the policies ? «, The Public action, under the direction of François Laced, ED. Harmattan, 1996.

Les chambres régionales des comptes

DEA « PUBLIC ACTION AND CONTEMPORARY COMPANIES » - HIGHER TEACHER TRAINING SCHOOL OF CACHAN- 2000/2001