Analysis Of Institutional Capacity Of Supreme Audit Institutions In The European Union In Terms Of Its Mandate

Orderly and efficient use of public funds is one of the essential conditions for the proper handling of public finances and the effectiveness of the authorities responsible decisions. To achieve this objective, it is essential that each country have a Supreme Audit Institution. For this reason, the Supreme Audit Institutions must operate with integrity, to fulfill their mandates as effectively as they can and meet the highest professional standards. These demands must be achieved by each of the Supreme Audit Institutions in challenging and marked by constant change environments. Taking into account the statement made in our work we propose as the main objective to explore the institutional capacities of the Supreme Audit Institutions in the countries of the EU. Our analysis uses a comparative approach within ten institutions in the European Union. The Supreme Audit Institutions belong to the following EU countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Czech Republic and Slovenia. The choice of the institutions was not a random, but we took into account the accession of the countries to the European Union (to include both the first wave of accession countries and of the second wave) and the form of organization - to cover all such four main ways of organization of the Supreme Audit Institutions of the European Union countries mentioned above. The results are based on three different sources: the information obtained from the websites of the Supreme Audit Institutions, official government documents and published reports of the Supreme Audit Institutions.