The notaires conveyancing monopoly, and the fees that they charge, is coming under increasing scrutiny by the French government.

The historically priveleged status of the notaires in France seems to be finally becoming a matter of public debate, following a leaked recent report prepared by the Inspection générale des finances (IGF) that there was no justification for the notaires monopoly of conveyancing and that their fees were excessive.

The report, which was commissioned by the former Minister of Finance Pierre Moscovici in 2012, was seized upon by the current postholder, Arnaud Montebourg, who promptly announced that he was going to hand over €6 billion to the French taxpayer by reducing the fees of all the regulated professions, including those of the notaires.

The IGF does not mince words in stating that with the substantial increase that had occurred in property prices over the past twenty years notaire fees had risen in the same manner, as their fees are based on a percentage of the sale price.

They criticised the link between fees and prices, as they considered that the mechanical increase that had occurred bore no relationship to the complexity of the work notaires had to undertake or the time taken to complete the task. "For the same service undertaken, the remuneration of a notaire had risen by 68% between 1981 and 2011", state the authors.

According to the report, notaires make a margin of between 30% and 40% on conveyancing transactions, which accounts for around 50% of their workload. As a result, their average annual income is around €141,000 a year, equivalent to €11,800 net a month.

To correct this anomaly the IGF proposes that the link between house prices and fees should be removed and that a regime of fixed tariffs should apply for the services provided by the notaires, a recommendation that has been endorsed by Arnaud Montebourg.

Whether the Minister of Finance will also go so far as to propose ending their conveyancing monopoly remains to be seen, but on that point the IGF is unequivocal. The report states that the preparation of a deed of sale (acte authentique) was not a task that needed to be exclusively reserved to notaires. Only the final stage of 'authentication' of the deed of sale was a matter for the public office of a notaire.

In a report that is surprising for the level of liberalism that it advocates the IGF considers that the notaires should be free to open offices anywhere in the country and that the prior authorisation of the State to open an étude should be ended. The number of such authorisations granted each year is well below the level of the demand, with the result that notaires pay a high price for acquiring the interests of an existing étude, thereby putting pressure on them to raise fees that were freely negotiable.

The professional body of notaires has reacted by reminding the government that they were substantial tax collectors of the State. They collect around €22 billion a year paid by their clients through stamp duty, inheritance taxes and other taxes for which they were responsible.

They stated that they are not opposed to a review of their fees, "both up and down", as a great deal of the work they undertook was at a loss. "The present system permits us to undertake work at price lower than cost for those operations of low value", stated Catherine Carely, who heads up the Chambre Interdépartementale des Notaires de Paris.

She pointed out the importance of the value of notaires offices in rural areas, "where there may not be a baker, neither a butcher nor even a post office, but where the notaires were always present, near to local people to offer them free advice," she stated.

In addition to the IGF report, the French Competition Authority is also preparing a report on the status of notaires, and the European Commission has targeted the notaires as a profession whose monopoly should come to end, as they consider it contrary to the free circulation of services.