Ms Marzenna Guz-Vetter said she appreciated NIK’s efforts to further the EU policy in sharing standards and good practices with the countries aspiring to the EU.
The President elaborated on the twinning project carried out by NIK together with its German counterpart (Bundesrechnungshof) in the State Audit Office of Georgia since 2014. The project will be completed at the end of this year. As part of the project NIK has shared its experience in financial audit with the SAI of Georgia.
This year NIK is actively preparing for a similar, Polish-Croatian project in the Supreme Audit Institution of Albania. The planned project will involve support in nearly all areas of the Albanian SAI’s activity – financial-, task performance- and IT audit as well as corruption prevention.
As much as possible NIK also supports the policy of the Polish government as regards strengthening aspirations of the European countries associated with the EU – Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Lately steps have been taken on President Kwiatkowski’s initiative to tighten cooperation among the SAIs of those countries and the SAIs of the EU member states. Currently the debate is going on within the Contact Committee of the EU member states and the European Court of Auditors (ECA).
In the second part of the meeting the President provided information on numerous cooperative audits conducted together with NIK’s Ukrainian counterpart. One of them was the audit on the contamination of the Bug River basin (where the SAI of Belarus is involved as well) and a planned trilateral Polish-Slovakian-Ukrainian audit on the biosphere protection in the East Carpathians.
At the of the meeting NIK representatives mentioned that NIK has also actively cooperated with its EU counterpart, the Luxembourg-based European Court of Auditors. President Kwiatkowski said that the joint mission of the ECA and NIK is to ensure effective auditing and thus contribute to good and effective management of European funds granted to Poland.
At the end of the discussion President Kwiatkowski also mentioned that in the past years NIK has been appointed external auditor of two prestigious international institutions: the European Organisation for Nuclear Research seated in Geneva and the Council of Europe based in Strasburg. The NIK auditors verify how funds are spent from the budgets of these organisations which are made of the governments of the EU member states. The Supreme Audit Office will be the auditor of the Council of Europe until 2019.
The European Commission Representative to Poland provided information of the EC activity in Poland and said she would like to make the information exchange between the two institutions more intense. NIK President declared that he would systematically inform the European Commission via the EC Representation of the results of any audits related to the EU, particularly to the EU spending. Both institutions are going to cooperate in the future.
