In the first part of its annual report on local government finances, published on 4 July this year, the Court of Accounts showed that local authorities as a whole were in a very favourable financial position in 2022, as they had been the previous year. In this second report, the Court points out that the financial position of local authorities, especially the departments and regions, could be less positive in 2023, as a result of lower tax revenues and the effects of inflation on expenditure. The Court also examines three complementary aspects of the constitutional principle of the free administration of local and regional authorities: financial autonomy; the equalisation of resources, a condition for the autonomy of disadvantaged local authorities; and the contractual arrangements under which the State and local authorities implement joint actions.
The Court puts forward proposals to reinforce the financial autonomy of local authorities, to strengthen the equalisation of resources in favour of the local and regional authorities that need it, and to make contractual tools that are too numerous and insufficiently demanding more effective.
