The 2012 annual meeting of the Contact Committee of the Heads of the EU Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) and of the European Court of Auditors (ECA) was hosted by Portugal's Tribunal de Contas on 18 and 19 October 2012 in Estoril. The meeting, chaired by the President of the Tribunal de Contas, Mr Guilherme d’Oliveira Martins, was attended by 93 delegates from the Member States’ SAIs and the ECA, as well as the SAIs of Croatia (acceding country) and four candidate countries (the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey); representatives of IDI-INTOSAI (Norway) and SIGMA (OECD) also participated.
The meeting's first theme, Challenges for SAIs in preparing for the next EU financial framework period, was tackled in a seminar.
The new Financial Regulation will reinforce Member States' accountability. New EU legislative acts concern fundamental matters such as strengthening the budgetary surveillance and economic policy surveillance of Member States, enforcing the correction of excessive deficits and macroeconomic imbalances and setting requirements for their fiscal framework.
The SAIs of the EU Member States and the ECA aim to contribute to better systems and to enhancing the effectiveness of the national use of Community funds, as well as to the European Union's new economic and fiscal governance measures; they are also committed to adopting an independent and rigorous stance as regards improving the quality of spending.
As regards the second theme, Latest developments in responding to the financial crisis and SAIs’ experience of related audits, the results of some specific analysis requested by the Contact Committee were presented: the report of the Task Force to explore the possibilities for cooperation with Eurostat and national statistical institutions; the state of play of the joint initiative of the euro-area SAIs regarding the external audit of the European Stability Mechanism; the report of the Working Group to undertake a pilot study to identify possible public audit deficits in the area of new arrangements, measures and instruments set up at national, EU and intergovernmental level in response to the financial and economic crisis; the progress report of the Fiscal Policy Audit Network.
The SAIs of the EU Member States and the ECA aim to contribute to better systems and to enhancing the effectiveness of the national use of Community funds, as well as to the European Union's new economic and fiscal governance measures; they are also committed to adopting an independent and rigorous stance as regards improving the quality of spending.
Furthermore, some SAIs also presented their views and experiences, mainly in the context of the financial crisis, concerning recent developments in financial audit and the role of SAIs; the implications in terms of accounting standards and the suitability of IPSAS for EU Member States; the budgetary rules and the income side of the State Budget.
After discussing themes I and II, the meeting was addressed by another prominent guest speaker, the Governor of the Banco de Portugal, Mr Carlos da Silva Costa, who gave the closing speech of the thematic part of the meeting.
Following the debates on the abovementioned themes, six resolutions were adopted concerning the implementation of future strategies to help clarify the roles of the SAIs in the context of new challenges, such as the recent developments in European Union economic governance.
The delegates were also briefed on the following activities of the SAIs: a report on Best audit practices and main audit recommendations for corporate governance audits of state and municipality owned enterprises (the SAI of Latvia); the seminar on Experience gained during the winding-up of the programming period 2000-2006 (the SAI of Hungary); and the audits Monitoring Risks to Public Finances (the SAI of the Netherlands) and Results of the Cooperative Audit of CO2 Emission Trading Systems (the SAI of Denmark).
During the meeting there was also a presentation by the Secretary-General of INTOSAI and the President of the SAI of Austria on an important United Nations General Assembly Resolution, A/66/209: “Promoting the efficiency, accountability, effectiveness and transparency of public administration by strengthening Supreme Audit Institutions”.
The Contact Committee's October 2013 meeting will be held in Vilnius, hosted by the SAI of Lithuania and chaired by the Auditor General, Ms Giedrė Švedienė.