This year marks the 40 anniversary of the establishment of the European Court of Auditors (ECA). To celebrate the anniversary, presidents and delegations of Supreme Audit Institutions participated in a ceremony also attended by heads of the main EU institutions: President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and President of the European Court of Auditors, Klaus-Heiner Lehne. Representatives of the Supreme Audit Office of Poland (NIK) with the President, Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, also participated in the event.
Supreme Audit Office of Poland and the European Court of Auditors are strongly oriented at citizens. Both institutions perceive their mission as an activity carried out mainly to the benefit of people, citizens of Poland and the European Union. This approach brings the ECA and NIK, which currently actively cooperate on the European audit of the protection of air against pollution, closer together.
The audit is conducted within a working group of the European Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions EUROSAI. NIK will audit particular Polish ministries and agencies, in order to examine and assess the activity of the government and local government bodies. The exchange of information and coordination of activities are to assure a unified approach and comparability of studies. The international air quality audit is the biggest audit conducted in Europe in the last years, particularly due to the number of institutions involved - fourteen European SAIs and the SAIs of Israel.
NIK and the ECA also cooperated on the horizontal review of the EU climate and energy strategy. For the first time the ECA decided to not only use its own analyses, but also the knowledge of other SAIs, in case of such a project. In August 2016 NIK submitted 45 reports on audits concerning energy and climate carried out in 2010. The ECA consulted the SAIs of Poland, Germany and Spain. The results of NIK audits were also presented to the external partners.
The ECA audit concerning the JASPERS instrument, conducted in cooperation with NIK and the Croatian SAI, will soon be finished. In Poland the audit covered the Ministry of Development, the General Directorate for National Roads and Motorways as well as several marshal offices and municipal offices. The results of the audit were presented at a meeting of the ECA and NIK representatives in October 2016 in Kraków. The ECA audit report, which includes the results of NIK audit, is going to be published this year. JASPERS is aimed to support the preparations of the biggest projects applying for the EU funding, primarily to assure high quality of grant applications submitted to the European Commission, which makes them more likely to be accepted.
Furthermore, NIK and ECA audit teams cooperate in the ECA audits in Poland, according to the regulations of the EU law. Polish auditors participate in the audits as observers, NIK facilitates the communication between the ECA officers and the national auditees, collects data and documents necessary for the audit and, where appropriate, submits comments to the audit findings. Last year the European Court of Auditors conducted 17 such audits in Poland.
At the meeting with the President of the ECA, Klaus-Heiner Lehne, NIK President, Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, presented the results of the audit Protection of Bug River Catchment Area From Pollution, including recommendations addressed at the European Commission. The Head of the ECA was also interested in the Polish report on how marketing authorisations for dietary supplements are granted. This audit has aroused a lot of interest in Poland, and the issue concerns many European states.
Yet another cooperation area between the ECA and NIK, of particular significance, is the air quality audit. Krzysztof Kwiatkowski suggested to closely link the work of auditors of both institutions in course of the ECA audit in Poland. As a result a letter of intent was signed that will enable the exchange of documents concerning the audit in Poland (including the relevant parts of audit programmes), as well as exchange of working views concerning the preliminary findings.
Meetings of the heads of NIK and the ECA are an important aspect of the cooperation between both institutions. NIK also closely cooperates with the office of the Polish Member of the European Court of Auditors, previously Augustyn Kubik, and currently Janusz Wojciechowski. It was Janusz Wojciechowski who ensured that the audit regarding the protection of animal rights was included in the ECA work plan. NIK has an extensive experience in this matter and is willing to share its knowledge with the ECA.
President Lehne visited NIK this February and both Presidents met at the Contact Committee in Bratislava in 2016.
In December 2016 the current and future means of cooperation were reviewed. The discussed issues included, among others, the EU regulations that oblige the EU bodies to draft official correspondence with the Member States in the official language of a particular state, as well as circulation of documents between the ECA and the Polish public administration bodies.
European Court of Auditors is the chief Supreme Audit Institution of the European Union with seat in Luxembourg. Its main task is to audit the accounts and the execution of the EU budget. The ECA comprises 29 members, one from each Member State, appointed by the Council of the European Union for six years. The Polish Member of the European Court of Auditors is Janusz Wojciechowski.
