Today, President of Latvia Egils Levits met with the members of the Forum of the Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) from the Eastern Partnership countries at the Riga Castle. He specifically emphasised the inextricable role of state auditors in sovereign democracies. President’s meeting with SAI representatives from Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan focused on domestic reform progress in these Eastern Partnership countries in areas like international standards and European integration.
For Latvia, State Audit Office is a crucial parliamentary scrutiny tool, President Levits said. It gives access to better understanding about legitimacy of public spending, efficiency of public investments and areas requiring reform. Egils Levits underlined the need to ensure autonomy and financial independence of State Audit Office and listened to the experience of Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Eastern Partnership SAI representatives shared their experience and thanked Latvia for helping them implement vital reforms through assistance programmes with State Audit Office and other partners who also helped train their experts.
Forum of the Supreme Audit Institutions from the Eastern Partnership and EU candidate countries has been created in scope of State Audit Office and Ministry of Foreign Affairs project ‘Capacity Building of the Georgian, Moldovan, and Ukrainian Supreme audit institutions in enhanced application of the International Standards of Auditing (ISSAI)’ and Development Cooperation Policy Plan 2021-2023. Goal of this project is to help SAIs in Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine switch to audits based on accepted international auditing standards.