R.T.C.A.

A Regional and Territorial Chamber of Accounts is headed by a Chamber President. It is organised into one or more sections. The function of public prosecution is performed by a government commissioner.

A Secretary General, under the authority of the President, is responsible for administration of the Regional or Territorial Chamber of Accounts.

The High Council of the Regional Chambers of Accounts, presided over by the First President of the Court of Accounts, is consulted for matters concerning the magistrates’ careers (promotions, change of assignment, disciplinary matters) and the operation of the chambers.

The Regional and Territorial Chamber of Accounts is presided over by a magistrate of the Court of Accounts.

The President is responsible for general management of the chamber.

He defines the organisation and the annual audit programme after consultation with the chamber and after obtaining the opinion of the Public Prosecutor.

He approves the composition of the sections and defines their powers and duties.

He presides over the chamber’s official public hearings and public and non-public meetings. He may preside over the section meetings.

He sends the observations made by his chamber to the managers of the local governments and entities.

A government commissioner, who is a magistrate belonging to the group of auditors of the Regional Chamber of Accounts, performs public prosecution functions.

He reports to the Public Prosecutor at the Court of Accounts.

In conclusions concerning the inquiry reports, he announces the public prosecution’s opinion regarding compliance with the procedures and the proper application of the statutes and case law.
He requests the initiation of contentious procedures (de facto management, fines).

He attends chamber meetings but is not involved in decisions made by the magistrates of the head court.

A Regional and Territorial Chamber of Accounts can consist of one or more sections which are presided over by a Section President. The Section President belongs to the group of auditors of the Regional and Territorial Chambers of Accounts.

The sections’ area of responsibility varies depending on the chambers. A section can be responsible for several sectors: geographic sectors (one or more departments), field-specific sectors (hospital sector, secondary education, etc.) or technical sectors (judicial control, budgetary control, etc.).

The sections are made up of magistrates, rapporteurs and assistants.

Magistrates of the Regional and Territorial Chambers of Accounts are recruited either directly upon completion of the Ecole nationale de l’administration or through the “external route”.

Rapporteurs of the Regional Chambers of Accounts are civil servants belonging to Category A groups (administrator level or equivalent) who are seconded.

Assistants of the Regional Chambers of Accounts are civil servants belonging to a category A (attaché level or equivalent) or category B group. They collaborate on the chambers’ audits and inquiries under the responsibility of the magistrates and rapporteurs.

Each Regional Chamber has a Secretary General who is responsible for the administrative, material and financial management of the chamber.
He is also responsible, in cooperation with the Court of Accounts, for personnel and human resources management.

Administrative personnel are assigned to the functions of registrar, archivist, file clerk, maintenance employee or receptionist. They are civil servants belonging to a category A (attaché level or equivalent), category B or category C group.

The 26 Regional and Territorial Chambers of Accounts are responsible for local governments (regions, departments, communes) and public institutions within their jurisdiction (hospitals, middle schools, secondary schools, communities of communes, etc.).

The smallest local governments (communities with a population of less than 3,500 inhabitants or whose operating revenues do not exceed €750,000) are not audited by the Regional and Territorial Chambers of Accounts, but rather by the paymasters general who report to the Ministry of Finance.

The Regional and Territorial Chambers of Accounts perform three functions:

- Audit of the accounts kept by public accountants of local governments and their public institutions

- Management review of these local governments and of the entities within their jurisdiction or receiving financial assistance

- Budgetary control of local governments and their public institutions

A Regional or Territorial Chamber of Accounts rules, within its geographic jurisdiction, on the accounts kept by public accountants*.

It verifies whether revenues have been collected and expenditures have been paid in accordance with the rules in effect. It analyses the accounts and supporting documents and checks whether the accounts balance. It then discharges* the accountant if the accounts are in good order, or it makes him a debtor* if revenues have not been collected or expenditures have been improperly paid. When the accountant leaves his position at a local government or entity and there is no charge against him, it discharges him*.

The Regional and Territorial Chamber of Accounts can also rule on the accounts kept by any person who, although not a public accountant by title, is involved in management of the local government’s or public entity’s revenues or expenditures: this person, declared a de facto accountant* through a judgment, is then subject to the same obligations and responsibilities as a public accountant, namely to file an account with the chamber in question and to obtain discharge from it.

Appeals against judgments

Appeals against final judgments of the Regional Chambers of Accounts are heard by the Court of Accounts.

*See glossary

A Regional or Territorial Chamber of Accounts can conduct an audit on management quality and regularity, on the prudent use of resources, and on the effectiveness of actions taken to meet the objectives established by the local government or entity in question.

At the end of an inter partes proceeding*, the Regional or Territorial Chamber of Accounts prepares a final observations report* which, together with the responses of the authorising officers (Mayor, President of the General Council, etc.), is sent to the deliberative body.

Provision of the final observations report

Citizens may be informed of the observations of the Regional Chamber of Accounts and of the authorising officer’s response. This report (1) may be provided to any requesting third party following the meeting of the entity’s deliberative body.

The Regional Chambers of Accounts may also publish the main observations in the Court of Accounts’ annual public report.


*See glossary

(1) During an election period, and more specifically starting with the quarter preceding the month in which voting occurs and up to the day after the elections, no final observations report may be published or sent to the deliberative bodies of the local governments in which the elections are held.

A Regional or Territorial Chamber of Accounts participates in the audit of the budgetary measures of local governments and their institutions, mainly at the request of the government’s representative and, in some cases, an interested party.

An audit of the budgetary measures occurs in five well-defined cases:

- When the budget of a local government has been adopted after the specified deadline (generally 31 March);
- When an unbalanced budget has been approved (where income is not equal to expenditures or the repayment of loans is not covered by own resources);
- When budget implementation shows a significant deficit;
- When the funds needed to pay a mandatory expenditure have not been budgeted for;
- When the administrative account has not been approved by the deliberative body.

The Regional or Territorial Chamber of Accounts issues a budget opinion in which it makes proposals for budgetary recovery. This budgetary control opinion is sent to the deliberative body of the local government, which then publishes it.

The annual work programme of each Regional or Territorial Chamber of Accounts is prepared by the President after consultation with the magistrates and after obtaining the opinion of the public prosecution.

In terms of judicial control, the accounts kept by public accountants of local governments and agencies within their jurisdiction are generally ruled on every four years.
The chamber selects the agencies whose management it will review from among these or other audits, such as entities not subject to government accounting (subsidised associations, mixed enterprises, public planning and construction organisations, etc.).

The Regional Chambers of Accounts may be involved in some of the Court’s work. Consistency among the various audits is assured by a liaison committee made up of seven senior magistrates (conseillers-maîtres), members of the Court’s seven chambers, and seven Regional and Territorial Chamber of Accounts Presidents.

The investigation is assigned to an audit team made up of one or more magistrates aided by rapporteurs and assistants. An audit can concern both the accounts and management, or only one of these two aspects.

The audit team conducts its audit “on documents”, i.e. based on the accounting documents (document sets*) sent each year to the chamber by the audited entity’s public accountant. It may also occur “on-site”. The chamber has the right to conduct any investigations it deems appropriate to fulfil its mission; under penalty of a fine, it may not be denied access to documents related to the audited agency’s accounts or management.

The procedure is carried out in the presence of all parties.

With regard to judgment of the accounts, the interim decision allows the accountant to learn of the chamber’s injunctions (requests for supporting documents based on generally critical findings: “charges”) and to provide all explanations in response. At the end of these exchanges, the chamber renders a final judgment.

With regard to management review, the chamber first sends a provisional observations report to the managers of the audited entities, who can then respond in writing and request a hearing before the chamber. After analysis of these responses and a possible hearing of the audited entity, the chamber prepares a final observations report (F.O.R.), which is sent to the head of the local government or agency. Another response may then be made to this report and is sent to the deliberative body of the local government or agency along with the chamber’s report.

The final observations report may then be made available to any person requesting it.

The chamber can also decide to send the report to the government authorities (and in particular to the Procureur de la République).

*see glossary

Together with the Court of Accounts and the Budget and Finance Disciplinary Court (BFDC), the 26 Regional and Territorial Chambers of Accounts form a coherent group of financial jurisdictions.

The creation of the 26 Regional and Territorial Chambers of Accounts was part of the decentralisation policy introduced in France by the law of 2 March 1982.

To counterbalance the freedom granted to communes, departments and regions to manage themselves, the legislators made provisions for post-audits of their accounts and management. These audits are conducted by the Regional and Territorial Chambers of Accounts, which are independent jurisdictions.

The 26 Regional and Territorial Chambers of Accounts (1)

The 24 Regional Chambers (22 in mainland France and two overseas for the West Indies-Guyana and Reunion) were created by Law 82-213 of 2 March 1982 concerning the rights and liberties of communes, departments and regions.
Two other chambers were subsequently created: the Territorial Chamber of Accounts of New Caledonia in 1988 and the Territorial Chamber of Accounts of French Polynesia in 1990. Their creation was part of the far-reaching decentralisation policy introduced in France by the law of 2 March 1982.

The decentralisation law

Article one of the “decentralisation law” of 1982 stipulates that “communes, departments and regions are freely administered by elected councils” and that “laws will determine the distribution of powers among the communes, departments, regions and central government”.
As a follow-up to the abolition of the prefecture’s traditional authority to oversee the actions of local governments in favour of supervision of legality (contrôle de légalité), and in light of the expansion of their powers, the legislators implemented impartial, independent post-auditing of the local governments’ accounts and management, which itself is decentralised in the various regions.
This independence is assured by the judicial nature of these new institutions and by the status of magistrate assigned to its members, following the example of the Court of Accounts.

(1) List of the Regional and Territorial Chambers of Accounts: Alsace, Aquitaine, Auvergne, Bourgogne, Bretagne, Centre, Champagne-Ardenne, Corsica, Franche-Comté, Guadeloupe - Guyana - Martinique, Ile - de - France, Languedoc - Roussillon, Limousin, Lorraine, Midi-Pyrénées, Nord-Pas-De-Calais, Lower Normandy, Upper Normandy, the Loire Region, Picardie, Poitou-Charentes, Provence Alpes Cote D'azur, Reunion, Rhône-Alpes, New Caledonia, French Polynesia