Contact Committee meeting in Warsaw on 11-12 December 2006
The annual meeting of the Contact Committee of the Heads of the EU SAIs and the European Court of Auditors was hosted by the SAI of Poland, and chaired by the President of the Supreme Chamber of Control, Mr Mirosław Sekuła. The Heads of the SAIs of the Candidate Countries of Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Turkey, as well as representatives from IDI, the EUROSAI Training Committee, and SIGMA, attended as active observers.
The programme for the meeting included a seminar entitled “Supreme Audit Institutions' Contribution to the Improvement of Accountability of EU funds”.
Guest speakers were Mr Siim Kallas, Vice-President of the European Commission, and Mr Szabolcs Fazakas, Chairman of the Budgetary Control Committee of the European Parliament.
The participants discussed, among other things, the developments taking place in the field of national declarations, advantages of and barriers to direct contacts between national audit institutions and the European Commission, the possibility of developing common methodology and auditing standards, and the advantages of and barriers to co-operation between the European Court of Auditors and national audit institutions during ECA audit visits to Member States.
The Heads of the SAIs also discussed ways of reinforcing cooperation and examined the results of the work of working groups covering specific areas of management of EU funds: public procurement, value added tax, agriculture, Structural Funds, national SAI reports on EU financial management, and audit quality. In addition, the results of cooperation between the SAIs of the Candidate Countries and Potential Candidate Countries were presented.