This passage went relatively unnoticed, in a 33-page speech peppered with improvisations. During his general policy declaration before the National Assembly, Tuesday October 1, Michel Barnier put on the table the necessity, “forty years after the major decentralization laws, [de] build a new contract of responsibility between local authorities and the State.” Responsibility, the term is loaded with meaning. In recent months, the departments, regions and municipalities have been singled out by Bercy because of the significant increase in their spending Last July, a note from the Directorate General of Public Finances anticipated that this drift would worsen France’s deficit by 16 billion euros in 2024.
On several occasions, Bruno Le Maire has sought to urge communities to participate in the recovery effort. These grievances had difficulty getting through to local elected officials. “We are led to believe that the public deficit would be the responsibility of the communities, whereas it is the fault of the State”, maintains Jean-Léonce Dupont, president of the Calvados departmental council. “We used infantilizing language which only amplified the problem. The executive, after digging holes in the hull of the ‘State’ boat, wanted to attack the lifeboats that are the communities”, translated into image David Lisnard, the mayor of Cannes and president of the association of mayors of France.
The tone should change with the new government. “We need to establish a partnership with the communities and make them feel like stakeholders. Don’t count on me to point out the culprits. It’s not the communities that are at the origin of the French public deficit,” assures L ‘Express the Minister of Public Accounts, Laurent Saint-Martin. But without a binding mechanism, the government has, for the moment, no means of acting.
Several failures in the past
The subject of contractualization is in any case highly flammable. “Anything that establishes a release under supervision is frowned upon. Local elected officials have the impression that they are being fooled every time,” says former prefect Pierre Monzani, director of the Support Association for the exercise. departmental and local responsibilities (Aserdel). Michel Barnier knows this and has for the moment taken gloves by insisting on dialogue and “collective effort”. In 2017, Edouard Philippe announced the establishment of a contract with the 340 communities spending more than 60 million euros each year. A one-way relationship, according to several local elected officials, and which had been poorly received. “Normally in a contract, the parties discuss, decide and come to an agreement. This one applies uniformly across the entire territory and is part of the Sovietist vision of a certain number of officials”, criticizes Jean -Léonce Dupont, who had not signed anything for Calvados.
Disconnected at the start of the pandemic, these “Cahors contracts” will then be definitively buried. “It did not work. It is very difficult to constrain communities and set them a spending objective,” underlines Renaissance MP Eric Woerth, author of a recent report on decentralization. “Let us not forget that there is a principle of financial autonomy for local authorities guaranteed by the Constitution and the legislator. This is perhaps also why no effective mechanism has ever been put in place in the long term to achieve these objectives , unless local authorities are transformed into simple state operators”, adds Aurélien Baudu, professor of public law at the University of Lille.
Once the health crisis was over, the debate resurfaced in 2022 thanks to a government project for a “contract of confidence”. “Bercy had proposed its implementation, Elisabeth Borne had refused. We then bet on the fact that the communities would self-manage. Two years later, we see that the absence of a regulatory tool does not work,” says a former advisor to Matignon. The public finance programming law for the years 2023 to 2027 then envisaged a new system for controlling the evolution of local public spending, before being rejected by deputies and senators. Only non-binding objectives were ultimately set.
Decentralize and spend less
The situation of the communities nevertheless remains very different depending on the strata. If the municipalities are doing well, the regions, and especially the departments, are in the red. With strong disparities. “The situation in the departments is explosive, it is deteriorating extremely quickly. There will be a victim,” fears François Sauvadet, the president of the Departmental Council of Côte-d’Or and the Association of Departments of France. The fault is a fatal scissors effect. On the one hand, the social expenses for which this level is responsible are increasing – the RSA, the Personalized Autonomy Allowance or even the Disability Compensation Benefit. On the other hand, revenue linked to transfer taxes for valuable consideration (DMTO) is falling due to the downturn in the real estate market. “Most of our expenses cannot be controlled. We are not going to refuse to provide a benefit. It is very hypocritical on the part of the State to point out the increase in our expenses, when we are not always warned of certain revaluations, which we sometimes learn about through the press”, regrets a good connoisseur of departmental finances.
Especially as the State transfers more and more powers to communities. “Bercy was also afraid that decentralization would contribute to an inflation of their expenses,” recalls Eric Woerth. Municipalities, departments and regions are on the front line, for example, facing the challenge of ecological transition. The Institute of Economics for the Climate calculated in a recent report that communities would have to spend 19 billion euros per year by 2030 in this area, compared to only 10 billion in 2023. They are now demanding a return to a form of fiscal autonomy which could involve the creation of a new tax. “Imagining a new tax tool is not easy,” recognizes Jean-Léonce Dupont. “There are several possibilities. We should sit around the table to find a solution.”
However, never short of proposals to reduce the public deficit, the Court of Auditors does not campaign for the return of a form of contract so as not to call into question the principle of free administration of local authorities guaranteed by the Constitution. The risk would be to put communities in a situation of not being able to exercise their skills. In its latest report on local public finances, published Wednesday October 2, it instead recommends that the State moderate part of their revenues… which would in fact encourage them to spend less. The Sages of Rue Cambon also recommend eliminating 100,000 positions by 2030, in order to return “to their level of the early 2010s”. They believe that at that time, communities were not understaffed. This is to overlook the fact that in the meantime, the needs of the territories have also increased.
.