Local authorities in Europe, major stakeholders in high-perfomance public administration

This seminar on the management of local authorities in Member States is organised by the Directorate General of Public Finances in the context of the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union. During this seminar, each Member State shall be represented by three senior civil servants from the Ministry in charge of local authorities.

The purpose of the seminar is to offer a comparative analysis of the legal and financial organisations of local authorities in Member States of the European Union.

The seminar will take the form of four workshops and one round-table session.

The four workshops will cover the following areas:

1. How can the quality of account-keeping in local authorities be guaranteed?

• What guarantees are there in respect of the regularity and fairness of local authorities' accounts?
• What bodies have been set up to maintain accounts?

2. How can the financial stability of accounts in local authorities be guaranteed?

• What verification procedures are there in respect of local authority budgets?
• What principles should be applied to budget documents?

3. How can the financing of local authorities be guaranteed?
What is the financing structure of local authorities?
What taxes can be applied to local authorities?
What financial autonomy do local authorities enjoy?

4. What administrative checks are there in respect of local authorities, and how can their performance be evaluated?

• What follow-up of activity (targets, indicators) is carried out by local authorities?
• Is there an evaluation of the performance of local authorities?
• What tools are there to measure performance? Is cost measure a component of performance measure? How can the level of satisfaction of users of public services be measured?

The question of structural funds will be raised during a round-table discussion through presentation of their new management programme, including new, stricter rules on how structural funds are used, and an increased level of control of the impact of structural funds (in particular, their leverage effect).
A cross-sectional analysis of fund management practices will enable identification of possible difficulties as well as best practices to be put forward, in order to guarantee optimum use of these funds and obtain the best possible utilisation rate.
Finally, this round-table discussion will study ways of strengthening territorial, social, and economic cohesion set in place by the Regio Directorate General of the European Commission.
 

• Updated: 15.12.2008

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