Every organisation needs a strategy, now more than ever, to project its vision and direction for the whole organisation as well as to offer insights to its stakeholders, whether institutional or non-institutional.
In these turbulent times of uncertainty, when it is being urged to also look at such aspects as fraud and risk management, a sharp, focused, forward-looking strategy for the European Court of Auditors is of the essence.
Late last month, this is precisely what we agreed upon ‒ a five-year strategy that should take us till the end of 2025. In the president’s own words, it builds on the achievements made so for and will guide our work as the EU’s independent auditor until then.
What is interesting is that, rather than a top down strategy, we developed it based on a participative process involving all levels of our organisation.
While acknowledging the difficult times ahead, we also recognised the resilience that the EU has shown when undertaking various vigorous and decisive actions in the past.
This is why we consider the 2021-2027 MFF and the Next Generation EU initiative, whose execution we shall audit, as living proof and a concrete example of this vitality.
When preparing this strategy we focused on the newly arising challenges emerging from these key and pivotal areas: European competitiveness and cohesion, European climate and resource challenges, European security and values and European public finance.
Our three key strategic goals that complement our sets of values, mission and vision are the need to: improve accountability, transparency and audit arrangements across all types of EU action, target our audits on the areas and topics where we can add most value, and provide strong audit assurance in a challenging and changing environment.
If we had to put in doubt any of our values we would weaken and lose credibility as an organisation. This is why we cherish our independence by carrying out our work free from influences that may compromise or may be seen to compromise our professional judgement.
We act honestly, reliably and solely in the EU public interest. We are impartial and unbiased and base our audit conclusions on sufficient, relevant and reliable evidence. We communicate our findings through clear, comprehensive and accessible reports published in all languages.
In line with international auditing standards, we acquire, develop and maintain the highest levels of knowledge, expertise and skills related to both the public audit profession and EU financial and policy management.
We cherish our independence- Leo Brincat
During the next five years, we will be using our mandate as the Union’s external auditor to: assess EU governance, identify audit and accountability gaps and examine the quality and reliability of the information and data reported by our auditees on the implementation of EU policies and the EU’s financial management.
We strongly believe that the best solution would be for the ECA to be mandated to audit all EU institutions and bodies set up by the Treaties but also all intergovernmental structures that are of key relevance to the function of the EU.
This is in line with our main task to keep accountable the various institutions and bodies managing EU funds and implementing EU policies.
With this firmly in mind, we are committed to explicitly support all initiatives that may entrust us with a clear and broader audit mandate and will liaise with all to support the achievement of this goal.
We are equally committed to further improve the impact of our recommendations to make them more relevant, useful, practical and cost effective and strengthen the follow up we give to them both at the level of EU institutions and bodies and the member states.
One of our objectives is to launch new initiatives that will strengthen our relationships with both member state governments as well as national parliaments while continuing to strive for a constructive relationship with the commission, our main auditee, while observing international standards in this respect.
We can only succeed if we manage to translate this strategy into action plans, align our performance indicators with this strategy and report periodically on progress made in implementing it.
Leo Brincat is a member, European Court of Auditors.