EUROSAI. Magazine N21 - 2015

EUROPEAN ORGANISATION OF SUPREME AUDIT INSTITUTIONS REPORTS OF EUROSAI GOAL TEAMS, WORKING GROUPS, TASK FORCE AND MONITORING COMMITTEE 28 www.eurosai.org · N.º 21 - 2015 speeches, SAI presentations, group discussions and networking. The first day of the Annual Meeting was dedicated to Auditing Issues Related to Industrial Waste and Chemicals. Invited keynote speakers from the European Environmental Agency, and Malta University introduced the management of hazardous waste, main challenges and occurring trends in the field. The importance of circular economy was emphasised in the keynote speeches. The participants then shared their experience in auditing different types of industrial and hazardous waste and discussed the main challenges in auditing these issues. It is a complex subject with lack of reliable data, audit criteria and common methodology. Therefore, special knowledge is needed to audit the field. On the second day of the Annual Meeting, the main topic under discussion was Reaching the Stakeholders. An invited speaker from Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences presented a recent study on how SAIs are perceived by stakeholders. The keynote speech was followed by SAI presentations and sharing of good practice on the mentioned topic. It was concluded that SAIs need to have well thought-through communication strategies and differentiated products in order to reach different stakeholders, e.g. auditees, parliament and general public. One of the most popular events during the annual meeting was the Experience and Information Sharing Market where SAIs brought materials to present their recent audit work. The Annual Meeting also allowed possibilities for side meetings to discuss cooperative audits. Auditing multilateral environmental agreements on air pollution and energy efficiency in public sector were considered as potential cooperative audit topics and will be followed up. The 13 th Annual Meeting was followed by EUROSAI WGEA Steering Committee (SC) meeting. One of the main outcomes of the SC meeting was the settling of the topics for the next meetings. It was decided that the focus of the next Spring Session, to be held in Tallinn, Estonia, will be waste recycling and circular economy. The training session prior to the 14 th Annual Meeting will be dedicated to auditing sustainable development and the Annual Meeting will discuss the issues of economic instruments for environmental management and the updated ISSAIs regarding environmental auditing. The next Annual Meeting will be hosted be the State Audit Office Macedonia. More on EUROSAI WGEA activities and environmental audits conducted by member SAIs can be read on the EUROSAI WGEA webpage ( www.eurosaiwgea.org ) or in the biannual Newsletter of the working group. 13 th EUROSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing Annual Meeting, Malta, 6-8 October, 2015