Given the role of the European Court of Auditors (ECA) it is understandable for one to ask whether COVID-19 has impacting its relevance, particularly as the external auditor of the EU budget.
On May 7 the president of the court addressed the issue and said: “It’s more crucial than ever that the Union delivers, and in helping citizens to overcome the crisis demonstrates the added value of European co-operation and solidarity.”
According to a recent court opinion, member states need to adjust their audit approach and pay attention to what extent spending is actually incurred for COVID-19 related measures.
The ECA is highly aware that the error rate that is regularly a main focus of its EU budget audit in its annual reports could see an increase because of the temporary relaxing of spending rules during the coronavirus crisis.
The issue of monitoring EU finances diligently becomes even more important against the developing scenario given that it is producing an increasing flow of performance audit reports based on the three Es – effectiveness, efficiency and economy – of EU policies and programmes.
Transparency and accountability become even more pivotal in the light of such special circumstances – standards which in our view the EU institutions should apply themselves to.
Although public health does not form part of the domain of the EU budget itself our Annual Activity Report mentions that we published an Audit Compendium on how auditors across the EU scrutinise public health.
Our synergy with Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) – national audit offices – can only become more relevant in the coming months since how Europe copes with this unprecedented crisis is a key area where EU SAIs could and should co-operate more. Our own engagement with the European Parliament can serve as a good practice for SAIs and their relations with national parliaments.
Official statements confirm the effective way the crisis pushed our court to change its working practices and to speed up its digital transformation. So much so that since the start of the pandemic, we succeeded to move 100 per cent of our operations online within 48 hours, and have since then carried out our work to date without any major disturbance.
We feel that our resilience in addressing such challenges ahead can only be heightened further given the recently completed Peer Review of our current strategy – a report by a group of four SAIs (Estonia, the Netherlands, Denmark and the US) that was recently published and will provide input for our next strategy – as from 2021 onwards.
While our Annual Activity Report for 2019 that is available online shows our checking of how EU policies and spending deliver value on the ground, we have also carried out a thorough analysis of the impact that the current COVID-19 pandemic has had on our work processes and products.
From day one of the crisis we not only acknowledged the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic requires everyone to adapt, but also that this applies to all the EU institutions and bodies. Undoubtedly we will be scrutinising any shortcomings on an EU level in the response to the coronavirus crisis while making warranted and necessary recommendations and considerations.
While we are committed to working closer than ever with our traditional institutional stakeholders since the funds involved are ultimately taxpayers’ money, it is in our interest to address citizens’ concerns – as the ultimate stakeholder.
Leo Brincat is member of the European Court of Auditors