President of the Supreme Audit Office of Poland, Marian Banaś, met with the President of the Hungarian State Audit Office, László Domokos - among others to sign a cooperation agreement between the two SAIs. This is yet another stage of the long-standing cooperation. Currently both SAIs participate in international audits on the protection against infectious diseases and on plastic waste.
At the meeting in Budapest the presidents discussed challenges faced by the Supreme Audit Institutions of the so called V4+2 Group, which comprises the SAIs of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Slovenia. Members of the Group consult audit-related areas of interest, seek solutions to address current issues and establish common positions on external state auditing, which are presented on the forum of the Contact Committee of the European SAIs and the ECA.
President Banaś and President Domokos also discussed the Three Seas Initiative and means to strengthen cooperation between SAIs of its member states.
Current joint undertakings implemented by NIK and the Hungarian SAO include the audit on the protection of population against infectious diseases. NIK as the first SAI in Europe initiated an audit aimed to check the preparedness of state bodies to act in case of real epidemiological threat. Results of the audit will be presented in September 2021.
Another recent joint initiative is the international audit of actions aimed to limit the production of plastic waste and its effective management, which was initiated at the meeting of the EUROSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing, chaired by NIK. Other participants of the audit, apart from NIK and the Hungarian SAO, include the SAIs of Albania, Bulgaria, Malta, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Turkey. The results of the audit will be presented in the last quarter of 2021.
President László Domokos last visited Warsaw in June 2019 - to attend the meeting of the Contact Committee, however NIK and the Hungarian SAO have been cooperating for many years now. In 2015-2016, NIK together with the National Audit Office of Lithuania conducted a peer review of the Hungarian State Audit Office, regarding communication with external stakeholders.
In 2017, representatives of NIK visited Hungarian audit institutions, as NIK was preparing to the audit on foreign currency loans. Polish auditors had the opportunity to identify similarities and differences between Poland and Hungary in this regard. They were also informed on the solutions introduced in Hungary to compensate the losses of foreign currency borrowers. The experience of the Hungarian SAI together with findings of the Polish audit, allowed NIK to draft recommendations on the protection of Polish consumers with foreign currency loans.
