16. Annual Meeting of EUROSAI WGEA held in Bratislava, Slovakia

Toomas Mattson | 10/4/2018 | 3:10 PM

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TALLINN, 29 September 2018 – The 16. Annual Meeting of the EUROSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing (WGEA) was held from 26-28 September 2018 in Bratislava, Slovakia, organized in cooperation of the National Audit Office of Estonia (NAO) and the Supreme Audit Office of the Slovak Republic. Prior to the meeting, on September 25th, a training seminar on climate change connected data took place. Altogether more than 70 representatives from 33 Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) and external organizations attended these events.

Climate change and increasing the impact of environmental audits had been chosen as central topics of the Annual Meeting. At the training seminar, focus was put on various types of climate change data as well as data sources. Meeting participants had a chance to hear keynote speeches made by experts from the European Commission, European Environment Agency, OECD, Comenius University (Slovakia) and the World Resources Institute. SAI representatives introduced their recent audits related to climate change issues and experiences in increasing the impact of environmental audits; an overview about ongoing cooperative environmental audits within the European region was also provided. Particular attention was paid to discussions among the working group members regarding future cooperative audits starting from 2020 and beyond. Representatives of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, General Audit Office of Argentina, the State Audit Bureau of Kuwait as well as the Ministry of Environment and Environment Agency of the Slovak Republic had been invited as special guests to the Annual Meeting.

The Annual Meeting was opened by the Chair of EUROSAI WGEA, Estonian Auditor General Mr Janar Holm and moderated by Ms Tuuli Rasso, Head of International Relations at NAO and Head of the Secretariat of EUROSAI WGEA. NAO’s auditor Kristiina Visnapuu introduced the results of the EUROSAI WGEA cooperative audit on energy efficiency of public sector buildings, a recently finalized collaborative effort of 8 SAIs coordinated by the National Audit Office of Estonia, and she also led the parallel session on potential climate change related cooperative audits. Auditor Alar Jürgenson presented Estonian environmental audits and participated actively in several meeting discussions.

In parallel with the Annual Meeting, a bilateral meeting of Auditors General Mr Janar Holm and Mr Karol Mitrík (Slovakia) was held wherein Mr Urmet Lee, Director of NAO, and Ms Tuuli Rasso also took part.

The next, 17th Annual Meeting of EUROSAI WGEA will be held in cooperation with the European Court of Auditors in Luxembourg in 2019, with biodiversity related topics and audit experiences in focus.

NAO Estonia will steer the work of EUROSAI WGEA until the XI EUROSAI Congress in 2020.

For accessing the materials of the Annual Meeting and the training seminar, kindly refer to https://www.eurosaiwgea.org/

Toomas Mattson
Communication Manager of the National Audit Office
+372 640 0777
+372 513 4900
[email protected]
[email protected]
www.riigikontroll.ee

 

  • Posted: 10/4/2018 3:10 PM
  • Last Update: 10/4/2018 3:11 PM
  • Last Review: 10/4/2018 3:11 PM

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