The Three Seas Initiative is a platform set up by the Presidents of Poland and Croatia in 2015. It associates 13 EU Member States from the Central and South-East Europe: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Primary objectives of the 3SI are to improve the region’s economic integration and increase the convergence and connectivity of the EU by cutting differences in the economic development between its Eastern and Western parts.
The President of NIK suggested the 3SI objectives should be pursued also at the level of Supreme Audit Institutions. Therefore, a new cooperation formula has been launched and formalised in the Declaration adopted on 5 December 2023 at the meeting in Warsaw. The heads of eleven Member States took part in the meeting as well as the Presidents of the SAIs of Montenegro and Moldova. The cooperation declaration also aims at facilitating joint audit projects undertaken from the 3SI Investment Fund, mainly in the areas of energy, transport and digital infrastructure. In his speech NIK President emphasised common values underlying the activity of the Three Seas states. The key value being the fundament of citizens’ trust in Supreme Audit Institutions is SAI independence. Marian Banaś encouraged all the meeting participants to defend their SAIs’ independence and declared his support in case it is threatened.
The SAI heads attending the meeting discussed projects carried out in their countries from the 3SI Fund, their strategic significance and planned approach in auditing those projects. In line with the Initiative idea, these are chiefly projects related to digital, road and rail as well as energy infrastructure.
The meeting was a perfect occasion to refer to the outset of the Three Seas Initiative, the set-up of its Fund and the political rationale behind it. The Head of the Chancellery of the President of Poland and Subsecretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who attended the meeting, elaborated on this point. Then a representative of the Institute of Central Europe recalled what factors made the 3SI come into being and underlined how important it is for the states being part of the Initiative to develop and cooperate. And last but not least, strategic investments – already carried out or planned in the Three Seas - were addressed. Most of them already are or will be audited by the SAIs represented at the meeting in Warsaw.
The 3SI aims to provide a platform for transatlantic cooperation by building areas of cooperation between the EU and the USA. The USA, being a partner state, fully support the Initiative. Comptroller General of the United States and Head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office Gene Dodaro could not attend the meeting in Warsaw but he expressed his support for the Initiative assumptions in a video that was played during the meeting.
