The 2014 annual meeting of the Contact Committee was chaired and hosted by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) in Luxembourg. The heads of supreme audit institutions (SAIs) of Albania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey, as well as representatives of the EUROSAI Secretariat and SIGMA, attended the meeting as active observers.

 

The main discussion topic of the Contact Committee meeting was enhancing co-operation between its members. The Contact Committee agreed that there were benefits in exploring possibilities for further co-operation, and as a first step established an early warning mechanism for monitoring EU developments, informing its member SAIs about them and proposing appropriate action.

 

Heads of SAIs also agreed that enhanced co-operation should extend to concrete audit activities, which can contribute to the improvement in financial management of EU policies and measures implemented at EU and national levels. Proposals for enhancing audit co-operation, notably in the areas of the Europe 2020 Strategy and the banking union, will be developed.

 

Two guest speakers were invited to share their views on the discussed topics. Mr Šoltes, Vice-Chair of the CONT Committee of the European Parliament and permanent rapporteur for relations with the ECA, presented the European Parliament’s Resolution of 4 February 2014, notably its section on co-operation between national SAIs and the ECA. He welcomed the fact that there had already been significant progress on many of the co-operation issues mentioned in the resolution, although there was room for better communication to the European Parliament. Mr Nunes de Almeida, Director for Public Procurement of DG MARKT at the European Commission, contributed to the discussion in the session in which the ECA presented its view on the first EU Anti-corruption report.

 

The next meeting – to be hosted and chaired by the State Audit Office of Latvia in June 2015 – will give the heads of SAIs the opportunity to follow up on the decisions taken in Luxembourg.