History

Those contacts made as a result of the numerous meetings and seminars organised among regional and local public finance audit institutions from European countries led to the constitution in October 1992 of an Organisation whose main goal consisted of consolidating the contacts already existing among its members. The constitutive conference of the European Organisation of Regional External Public Finance Audit Institutions (EURORAI) was held in Manchester (England) on September 29-30 and October 1, 1992. The Organisation was founded by representatives of 15 regional and local audit institutions from Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

The first years were devoted to consolidate the Organisation, and the number of members increased considerably by joining EURORAI not only audit institutions from the above mentioned countries but also audit bodies from France, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia and Ukraine.

As a consequence of opening the Organisation to non-European regional audit institutions within the framework of a joining as associated member, some courts of audit from the federal states from Brazil joined EURORAI throughout 1996 and 1997.

In 2001, Italian member institutions ceased to be members due to changes in Italian legislation that abolished the regional public sector audit institutions (comitati regionali di controllo) and granted the financial audit of the regional public sector to the State Court of Audit, the Corte dei Conti, and its regional sections. Some other member institutions were abolished, too, such as the in-house Audit Practice of the Audit Commission for Local Authorities and the National Health Service in England in 2012 (all the local public audit work performed by the Audit Commission’s in-house Audit Practice was transferred to the private sector) and the Audit Office of Castile-La Mancha (Sindicatura de Cuentas de Castilla-La Mancha) in Spain in 2013 (since then the audit of the regional public sector in Castile-La Mancha is carried out directly by the State Court of Audit, the Tribunal de Cuentas). On the other hand, the membership of the Accounts Chamber of the Supreme Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea was cancelled in 2013 due to the persistent non-payment of membership fees since the institution joined EURORAI in 2002.

Today EURORAI has 92 members coming from 16 countries. Likewise, some state audit offices decided to apply for associated membership in EURORAI since they were interested in the work accomplished by the Association in the field of local government audit. Moreover, the statutory reform approved in 2001 created the status of observer, which has been granted since then to the Auditor General of Quebec, the Canadian Council of Legislative Auditors,  the Associations of Comptrollers for Local Authorities in Slovakia and Lithuania, the Association of Chambers of Control and Accounts of the Russian Federation, the Audit Office of the Province of Salta (Argentina), the Spanish Foundation for Training and Research in Public Sector Auditing (FIASEP in its Spanish acronym), the Institute Rui Barbosa – the Association of Courts of Audit from Brazil, the Norwegian Association of Local Government Auditors and the Association of Lead Controllers of the Self-governing Regions in Slovakia.