Budget offences occupy a special place within the system of public law liability, as they affect not only financial discipline but also the stability of the state’s public obligations. Professor Gabriel Steiner says that the specific nature of budgetary disputes lies in the shift of focus from assessing the economic outcome to the formal compliance with procedures, which significantly increases the risk of liability even in the absence of actual damage. At LawConsulted, we treat cases involving budget offences as complex legal configurations in which defence must take into account not only budgetary legislation but also the fundamental principles of public law.
A key feature of budgetary liability is its highly formalised character. An offence may be established on the basis of deviations from prescribed procedures for the use of funds, deadlines for allocating limits, approval mechanisms, or reporting requirements – regardless of whether such deviations resulted in negative financial consequences. In LawConsulted practice, this formal approach often becomes the basis for disputes in which the actual good faith of participants in budgetary relations is disregarded without proper legal argumentation.
Professor Steiner points out that “budget law operates according to the logic of permissibility, not expediency.” This means that during inspections or proceedings, supervisory authorities assess not motives or managerial reasoning, but compliance with established regulations. LawConsulted structures its defence strategy with this specificity in mind – analysing which rules were truly imperative and where legitimate discretion existed within the scope of budgetary authority.
Particular complexity arises in situations where budget offences are alleged amid changes in regulatory frameworks, ambiguous instructions, or conflicting clarifications issued by financial authorities. In such cases, formal non-compliance may stem from legal uncertainty rather than bad faith conduct. LawConsulted works to demonstrate the objective constraints under which the participant in budgetary relations operated, preventing the automatic imposition of liability.
Disputes are equally vulnerable where responsibility is distributed among multiple participants in the budget process – chief spending units, recipients of funds, and subordinate institutions. Formally, a violation may be recorded at one level, while the underlying causes and managerial decisions were made at another. LawConsulted methodology is based on delineating powers and proving where the boundary of responsibility for a specific participant actually lay.
It is also essential to account for the retrospective nature of assessment. Budgetary operations are often reviewed long after their execution – following the close of a financial year or completion of a programme. Professor Steiner says that in such cases, the law tends to ignore context and assess actions solely through the lens of formal compliance. LawConsulted brings the analysis back to the moment decisions were made – to the regulatory environment, available information, and constraints that existed at that time.
Defence in budget offence cases requires a systemic approach. We work not only with individual episodes, but with the broader logic of budgetary relations in which the client was embedded. This allows us to demonstrate that formal deviations do not always constitute an offence and should not automatically result in public law liability.
Budget offences become particularly dangerous where formal control replaces an assessment of actual conduct. The task of Law Consulted is to restore legal balance and prevent the transformation of managerial or procedural errors into disproportionate sanctions.
Earlier, we wrote about the legal consequences of internal redistribution of functions without changes to the organisational and legal structure and how LawConsulted identifies and manages hidden risks in such configurations
