Supreme Audit Institution of Croatia hosted this year's regular annual Contact Committee meeting. Contact Committee promotes and facilitates cooperation between EU Member States SAIs, candidate and potential candidate countries and observers by means of several initiatives, as an autonomous, independent and apolitical forum to discuss audit topics of common interest and to exchange information. The main theme of this year’s Contact Committee meeting, organised in close cooperation among Slovenian and Croatian SAI and ECA, was "Interaction with EU citizens – opening SAIs".
Moderator of the meeting President of the Court of Audit, Tomaž Vesel, guided the discussion by emphasising the key points, i.e. ways of cooperation with different groups of citizens, opportunities and challenges of such cooperation and called for relevant proposals, such as in which phases of the audit process it is most suitable to involve the citizens.
After the presentations of some heads of SAIs regarding the interaction with the citizens, the innovative tools of communication with the citizens and the interested public were highlighted. The Court of Audit presented several videos indicating cooperation between our SAI and the interested public. Thereby SAIs showed growing interest in developing such materials by using in-house resources.
In the summary of the constructive discussion the President Vesel pointed out that the SAIs have no doubt an important role in involving wider public in the audit procedures, nevertheless it is relevant to bear in mind that quality assurance of the audit reports and efficiency in implementing necessary changes in auditing are much more essential than a quest for public acceptance.
Along with the Contact Committee meeting, there were also in-camera session of the heads of SAIs and a meeting of the Liaison Officers coordinating joint documents and projects of all SAIs of the EU. The event also offered an opportunity for bilateral meetings and informal discussions, enabling the Court of Audit to agree upon some joint activities with other SAIs in future.