Co-operation between the Netherlands Court of Audit and the European Court of Auditors

At July 13, 2010 Saskia J. Stuiveling, president of the Netherlands Court of Audit (NCA) and Vitor Manuel da Silva Caldeira, president of the European Court of Auditors (ECA) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that governs the co-operation for mutual audit work between both institutions. A first pilot audit will be executed as a ‘coordinated audit’ and focuses on the “Common Agricultural Policy under Shared Management” which includes several subsidies and grants. A similar co-operation exists between the ECA and the Supreme Audit Institution of the Czech republic.

The NCA and the ECA have the desire to co-operate more intensely. Both institutes can share knowledge and may learn from each other. At the same time both the European and the Netherlands Parliaments may be served with information that can lead to an improved management and accountability of EU funds. The latter also was the driver for the implementation of the Netherlands EU Member State Declaration in 2006. The experiences and the results of the co-operation will possibly result in similar initiatives in other EU member states.

The agreed coordinated audit shall cover the claims on agriculturefunds towards the European Commission for the financial year 2010 (16 October 2009 – 15 October 2010). The results of the audit thus will be included as well in the Assurance Declaration (Déclaration d’Assurance – DAS) by the ECA as in the NCA report Report on the Dutch EU member state declaration 2010.