Local Power to Tax and Devolution: An Empirical Assessment of the French Constitutional Reform

The article explores the content and consequences of the French constitutional reform of March 2003. Among the objectives of that reform, one is to preserve the tax autonomy for the local public sector; another is to ensure that the coming wave of devolution of competencies to decentralised levels of government will be adequately financed. These constitutional safeguards are assessed and they prove to be somewhat counterproductive, as if the recourse to the higher level of juridical norms could not replace the legislative level when reforms of local public finance, however difficult, have to be conducted.