Fiscal management as a substantive and procedural presupposition of fiscal responsibility

Abstract

The concept of fiscal management is a presupposition of fiscal responsibility, and only to the extent that there is a conjunction between the conduct deployed by the agent (public or private) based on a constitutional, legal (in a material sense), statutory, regulatory or contractual competence or authorization, as the case may be, to administer or manage public assets, and the element of damage, the competence of the Fiscal Control Body to legitimately and validly promote the fiscal action through the correlative process will arise. Therefore, correctly identifying its content and legal structure is a task of capital importance that concerns, on the one hand, the legitimacy and institutional validity of the actions of the Comptroller’s Office and, on the other hand, the principle of legal certainty, in the sense that this guarantee of certainty and objective foreseeability is projected on the conduct of individuals (as eventual passive subjects of the fiscal action), in terms of equality, good faith, legitimate trust and, of course, under the iusfundamental plexus of due process (principles of legality and natural judge, among others). In this sense, an analysis of the fiscal management will be presented, which will allow us to unravel its configuration as a principle and rule of positive law, and as a transversal concept in fiscal responsibility, and the process itself, as well as its projection in the field of individuals, all by way of an interpretative statement, and in a context of legal reality.