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As expected, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri signed the draft law for the 2024 budget and transferred it to the Caretaker Prime Minister. All eyes are now on the final budget draft, which will most probably be published in the official gazette this week.
According to certain information, the Lebanese Forces bloc formed a smaller parliamentary committee comprising MPs Ghada Ayoub, Razi el-Hage, and Georges Okais, in addition to several economic and legal experts. The initiative aims to create a final draft of the appeal that the LF MPs will file with the Constitutional Council in the coming days, after the publication of the budget in the official gazette.
Indeed, sources close to the Lebanese Forces’ parliamentary bloc have confirmed that the decision has been taken and that several meetings are being held to formulate the appeal that will be filed before the Constitutional Council after the MPs receive, in the coming hours, a draft of the 2024 budget approved by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Monday morning.
Information also indicates that the appeal in question that is being prepared by the Lebanese Forces MPs will target specific clauses and the way the budget will be adopted, without approving accounts. Article 87 of the Lebanese Constitution indeed stipulates that the budget must be accompanied by an approval of accounts.
The state’s general budget, a financial report covering estimates of profit and expenditures of the fiscal year, is published annually by the Ministry of Finance. The approval of accounts, however, is considered the real budget — the accurate calculation of profit and expenditures, not the estimate. Article 87 also stipulates that “the final accounts of the financial administration for every fiscal year must be submitted to Parliament for approval before the publication of the next year’s budget, and a special law should be put in place for the creation of a Court of Auditors.” This means that the financial administrations are required to submit their accounts to Parliament for approval before the publication of the budget for the new fiscal year, which did not happen when it came to the 2024 budget. And, as opposed to the Constitutional Council, the Lebanese Parliament authorized, for reasons difficult to believe, the violation of Article 87 by approving the 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2024 budgets without approving accounts. It is also worth noting that in this context, the exception has become the rule, and it is incumbent on the Constitutional Council to uphold the Constitution and make sure it is respected.
As for the appeal regarding the 2024 budget, sources close to the Lebanese Forces’ parliamentary bloc confirm that the appeal in question will also target several articles relevant to the budgetary riders. In other words, these cannot be included in the state budget and require a law, much like the article covering the amendment of municipal taxes. Said law must be proposed separately by considering registration fees, rental value, and municipal taxes, especially since earnings from these taxes are not part of the state budget but rather of the municipalities’ accounts. This, therefore, is why this article included in the 2024 budget was compared to budgetary riders.
Some MPs did not hide their fears regarding what would be included in the final draft of the budget, which Parliament Speaker Berri approved amid the chaos surrounding the adoption of the articles. Several MPs were left confused as to what was adopted and what was not, for lack of rigorous record-keeping and the existence of articles that were said to be amended but were not — while others were amended in ways different from the convened ones.
Lastly, Berry asked for the final session’s recordings to be transcribed, especially the amendment proposals and the relevant voting, to present a final and clean version to the Cabinet for publication in conformity with legal proceedings.
When the appeal is filed, the Constitutional Council will have two options. The first one is to annul the budget altogether, an unlikely possibility given the precedents generated by previous appeals targeting older budgets whose accounts were not approved, knowing that the annulment of the budget in question will inevitably cause a return to the provisional twelfth. The second option, on the other hand, would be the annulment of some clauses, a more likely scenario.
