The 9th annual meeting of EUROSAI WGEA, hosted by the Swedish National Audit Office, concluded today
October 14 2011
The Swedish National Audit Office has hosted the annual meeting of the EUROSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing (WGEA), which took place at Norra Latin Conference Centre in Stockholm on 11-13 October 2011. EUROSAI WGEA is chaired by the Office of the Auditor General of Norway. Approximately 70 auditors participated in the meeting, representing Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) from across Europe.
The Swedish Auditor General Gudrun Antemar hosted the event together with the Office of the Auditor General of Norway, and opened the meeting on Tuesday 11 October and underlined that “As part of our strive to serve the citizens of our countries, by promoting good governance and effective and efficient use of public resources, we as SAIs have an important task in devoting to environmental auditing.”
One of the themes of this year’s meeting was Transport related environmental issues. The key-note speakers gave rewarding input to the succeeding group discussions. One of the key-note speakers was Thomas Sterner, professor of Environmental Economics, University of Gothenburg. During the group discussions, many possible audit topics on transport related environmental issues were identified.
There was also a working session on “auditing the 3 Es” – Economy, Efficiency, Effectiveness, chaired and moderated by the Swedish Auditor General Claes Norgren. Claes Norgren stressed that the 3Es are cornerstones in our daily work and that they distinguish our work from other studies and investigations.
On 10 October, before the annual meeting, a seminar on “Best practice in environmental auditing” was organised by the EUROSAI WGEA secretariat, with contributions by the Swedish National Audit Office among others. The seminar focused on the use of INTOSAI International Standards of Supreme Audit Institutions (ISSAI) in relation to audit criteria and evidence in environmental auditing. During the group discussions several innovative audit evidence were identified.
EUROSAI (European Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions) is one of the regional groups of INTOSAI, an international organisation for Supreme Audit Institutions. EUROSAI has 49 European national audit institutions and the European Court of Auditors.
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