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The Heads of the Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) of the European Union and the European Court of Auditors (ECA) met in Helsinki on 3-4 December 2007
 
 
 
The annual meeting of the Contact Committee of the Heads of the EU SAIs and the ECA was hosted by the SAI of Finland, and chaired by the Auditor General of Finland, Mr. Tuomas Pöysti, on 3-4 December 2007. The Heads of the SAIs of the Candidate Countries of Turkey, Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, as well as representatives from the EUROSAI Training Committee and SIGMA, attended as active observers.
 
The programme for the meeting included a seminar on risk management in the good governance of EU funds. The theme of the seminar was "Risk management, tolerable level of risk and the integrated internal control system in the management of EU funds".
 
The seminar had as its main goal to continue the discussion that had been started within the reform of the Financial Regulation and the roadmap of the integrated internal control system and also to discuss the role of the Member State supreme audit institutions in assuring and improving the good governance of EU funds.
 
Guest speakers were Mr. Siim Kallas, Vice-President of the European Commission, Mr. Herbert Bösch, chairman of the Budgetary Control Committee and Mr. Matti Ahde, Chairman of the Audit Committee of the Finnish Parliament.
 
Presentations by the guest speakers were followed by interventions from some SAIs relating to their respective national experiences regarding the management of risk and the role of SAIs in the definition of a tolerable level of risk in the context of the EU.
 
The seminar underlined the important role of the SAIs in the management of risks related to the EU budget and the need for a common understanding of risk categories and tolerable levels of risk.
 
The participants also discussed the results of the work of working groups covering specific areas of management of EU funds: structural funds, national SAI reports on EU financial management, value added tax, public procurement, auditing standards, audit quality and agriculture. Finally, the results of the Network of cooperation of the SAIs of the Candidate Countries and Potential Candidate Countries, the ECA and SIGMA were presented.