3

The law of December 16, 2010, reforming local and regional authorities does not have a direct financial objective, apart from some ad hoc arrangements. It is nonetheless very deeply involved in public finance, staying in the background and aiming to significantly rework the architecture of decentralized authorities in order to reduce costs, which is now a priority due to the serious public finance crisis affecting all other policy areas. Public finances must be reined in for all policy areas and the performance of administrations must be improved. Two sets of measures target this objective. The first concerns allowing for merging authorities, not only at the municipal level but also at the level of départements, regions, and intercommunal bodies. This type of operation can only produce modest results, which is all the more the case since elected representatives have been given the freedom to choose to take part. The other measures concern competencies, the complexity and inadequacy of which have long been criticized. Lawmakers did not have the audacity to go for a fully-fledged, systematic overhaul. Instead, they introduced complicated rules for specialization of competencies at regional and département level, management of cofinancing and subsidies, and redistribution of competencies among categories of territorial authorities that will not make it possible to save much money.