For over ten years, the Heads of the Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, as well as Austria and Slovenia (the so called V4+2) have been closely collaborating on a regular basis. At annual meetings, they share information in order to get acquainted with best practices applied in other states.
At the latest meeting, held in Luhačovice, the Czech Republic, the participants discussed their experience in the field of application of IT tools in auditing. Slovak auditors presented the IT system which they had been developing, aimed to become an element of a national e-administration development project, to be used not only to manage the audit process but also to share information among various public institutions. The NIK, in turn, presented its IT tools applied to support the audit process.
Representatives of the SAIs of Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary touched upon the issue of reports on EU funds management. These reports are usually based on the results of audits conducted by individual SAIs and on information from the European Court of Auditors and the European Commission. Reports vary from country to country with regard to, for example, the way they are generated and source materials used to develop them.
The SAIs of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia shared their experience in the field of trans-border cooperation. The Hungarian and Slovak participants discussed the audit of the INTERREG Community initiative, while the NIK presented the details of the audit of the programme for trans-border cooperation between Poland and Slovakia for the years 2007-2013, conducted jointly by the Polish and Slovakian SAIs. At the meeting, the Heads of the V4+2 SAIs decided that the SAI of the Czech Republic would initiate works on conducting in 2013 a joint audit of EU trans-border cooperation programmes.
Moreover, the SAI of the Czech Republic presented information on the instrument for preventive surveillance of the economic and fiscal policies of EU member states introduced in 2011 (the so called European semester). EU recommendations make a criterion on the basis of which SAIs can assess budget bills and audit activities of respective ministries in their countries.
The next meeting of the Heads of V4+2 SAIs will be organised in autumn 2012 in Hungary.
