On the first day of the TFMA meeting, Chairman of EURORAI Joan Roselló Villalonga, addressed new challenges related to the internal audit of grants and subsidies extended by local authorities in Spain. On the other hand, Director of the Association of Polish Counties Grzegorz Kubalski presented an extensive impact analysis of a range of changes which occurred in the transfer criteria. They have influenced the budget condition and the possibilities of financing new tasks as well as the autonomy of municipalities in Poland in 2019-2023.
Treasurer of the City of Warsaw Mirosław Czekaj discussed the Warsaw budget, indicating its holders. He also described the types of tasks financed and the ways of measuring their results in the task performance and traditional perspective. Mirosław Czekaj explained the methodology of a long-term financial forecast – the 2050 perspective – of the budget planning by means of the Business Intelligence tools, both for planning and reporting. He also presented an internal audit of municipality’s spending and results of external audits of the city’s financial reports. The Warsaw City Treasurer also highlighted the domestic and international ratings of the Warsaw City’s finance, made by external experts as a tool to monitor the management quality.
Then the auditors from the SAIs of Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Kosovo and Serbia conducted workshop sessions and a discussion panel on case studies concerning among others:
- improving the methodology for auditing municipal transfers and grants;
- distributing transfers and grants;
- financing local governments from the support fund; or managing the process of extending grants and subsidies in the agricultural sector.
On the second day of the TFMA meeting, its participants addressed execution of the Group’s objectives, its activity schedule as well as the tasks performed, e.g. results of the joint international audit were discussed: „Audit of Municipalities’ Own Revenues for Providing Quality Services to the Citizens during Pandemic” (NIK was one of its participants) and activities being par of the Group’s work plan, among others related to: municipal debt management, audit compendium on local transport, TFMA municipal budgetary database and the new TFMA strategy for the period 2024–2027. Also a meeting of NIK President and Auditor General of Lithuania was held.
At the end of the 7th annual seminar, Vice-President of Warsaw discussed the City’s biggest investment projects, of which transport projects are the most expensive, including the subway construction, as well as the city transport projects financed as part of the Integrated Territorial Investments (from Polish: ZIT). He also presented the scope of cooperation when undertaking strategic tasks as part of the Warsaw metropolitan area.
2023 is the last year under the chair of the SAI of Lithuania. From the following year, the TFMA Secretariat will be administered by representatives of the SAI of Latvia.
TFMA’s historical background
At the EUROSAI Governing Board Meeting on 13-14 June 2016, the National Audit Office of Lithuania addressed the Governing Board with an official letter to establish a Task Force on Municipality Audit within EUROSAI (EUROSAI TFMA). The EUROSAI Governing Board agreed to establish the EUROSAI TFMA, official activities of which started with the EUROSAI TFMA kick-off meeting held on 11-12 April 2017 in Vilnius, Lithuania.
The Vision of the Task Force on Municipality Audit (TFMA) is to implement relevant improvements to municipality audit systems in EUROSAI countries.
Our Mission is to create an open platform to share the best practice and experience on the municipality audit.
The TFMA Strategic Goals for the period 2021-2024:
- Strategic Goal I: “Exchanging the best practice and experience to reach audit results that have a substantial impact on improving public financial management”.
- Strategic Goal II: “Making the external municipal auditing system more efficient”.
- Strategic Goal III: “Encouraging cooperative audits”.
