Audit Authority

The Audit Authority is an independent body responsible for auditing the management and control system of EU funds; in Slovakia this function is performed by the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic through its audit and control section and cooperating audit units. The Audit Authority carries out system audits, which examine the functioning of managing authorities and intermediate bodies, and audits of operations on a statistical sample of projects, in which auditors verify directly with recipients the eligibility of expenditure, public procurement, and compliance with the terms of the contract. The results of the audits feed into the annual assurance package for the European Commission, which uses them to assess the reliability of drawdown across the whole country – a high error rate can lead to a blanket suspension of payments for the programme. Audit differs from an ordinary inspection in its deeper scope and in the fact that its findings are binding on the provider and lead retroactively to corrections even for expenditure already approved. The recipient is obliged to keep the complete project documentation, generally for ten years, precisely for audit purposes.