On 7 March 2016 in Luxembourg NIK President Krzysztof Kwiatkowski signed the Memorandum of Understanding between the European Court of Auditors (ECA) represented by the Austrian ECA Member Oskar Herics, the State Audit Office of the Republic of Croatia (SAO) represented by the Auditor General of the Republic of Croatia Ivan Klešic and NIK.
The MoU paves the formal way for co-ordinated performance audit project of the ECA, the SAO and NIK in terms of JASPERS initiative, being the Joint Assistance to Support Projects in European Regions. JASPERS mainly provides support of large investment projects worth more than EUR 50 million which qualify for the financial aid from structural and cohesion funds in the EU member states. The total value of projects that have been supported by JASPERS since 2006 exceeds EUR 28 billion (about PLN 120 billion).
The auditors want to check if the JASPERS instrument contributes to faster and more effective EU grant application process as well as better preparation of the projects. Joint work on the audit programmes and methodology arrangements will ensure homogeneous audit approach, whereas the discussion and document exchange will allow an in-depth analysis in view of future evaluation and recommendations as well as effective use of the resources.
Cooperation in the audit process is in the common interest of NIK, the SAO and the ECA. The participating institutions will mutually benefit from the exchange of experience, views and ideas. The ECA wants to take advantage of the practical knowledge of national Supreme Audit Institutions. At the same time the SAIs will have the opportunity to use the experience of the ECA auditors in the area of projects co-financed from the EU. The cooperation is also to make sure the participants communicate audit results in a consistent way and that the impact of their communication is getting stronger.
The audit will be conducted in compliance with the mandate of each party and with respect for their independence. Standardisation of measures taken as part of the audit will be guaranteed by the participants' compliance with the International Standards of Supreme Audit Institutions (ISSAI) and the International Standards on Auditing (ISA).
