Financial Liability of Public-Law Entities for Failure to Comply with the Conditions of Interbudgetary Subsidy Agreements

The subject of the study comprises the norms of the budget legislation of the Russian Federation regulating relations arising in connection with measures of financial liability imposed on public-law entities when they fail to comply with the conditions of interbudgetary subsidy agreements. The purpose of the work is to define the financial liability of public-law entities. The objectives are: to analyze the legal regulation of such financial liability; to determine the limits of the powers of the highest executive bodies of state authority to establish measures of liability for budget violations; to assess the consequences of applying financial-liability measures; and to develop proposals for improving legislation. The relevance of the work is due to the absence in scholarly literature of a theoretical and legal analysis of measures of financial liability of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and municipal formations for non-fulfilment of interbudgetary subsidy agreements with a view to their conformity with higher-ranking legal acts, which also predetermines the scholarly and practical novelty of the paper. The methodological basis consists of the formal-legal, structuralfunctional, comparative, research and analysis methods applied to scholarly and normative material. The article substantiates that measures of financial liability for failure to comply with interbudgetary subsidy agreements are not supported by legitimate means of state coercion. Such measures also cannot be determined by the parties to an interbudgetary subsidy agreement, since this agreement, being a special public contract, may not contain financial-liability measures not provided for by federal legislation. Based on an analysis of legislation and law-enforcement practice, it is argued that the measures of liability and the procedure for their application must be established by federal laws, rather than by acts of the highest executive authorities, because delegated regulation should detail rather than supplement the law. The existing mechanism of financial liability contradicts the constitutional principle of equality of all before the law and creates conditions for the recovery of penalty funds from the budgets of public-law entities and from the population as a whole. In this regard, the study substantiates the need to establish administrative liability for officials for failure to fulfil the conditions of interbudgetary subsidy agreements and other agreements. The proposals advanced in the work may be used to improve interbudgetary relations.