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Presentation

COUR DES COMPTES

Financial courts have international cooperation sustained activity in the various networks of supreme audit institutions. The Cour des comptes and Regional and Territorial Chambers of Accounts (RTCAs) help strengthen the capabilities of many recent supreme audit institutions through a wealth of bilateral and multilateral cooperation efforts. These come in response to ever-increasing, pressing demands from the SAIs themselves, as well as from financial backers in the field of public finance such as the World Bank. In addition, the financial courts have a teaching role for the most active Sais worldwide: the specific characteristic of the French organisation and the diversity of its remit entail regular efforts to provide explanations, thus ensuring better understanding of bodies’ respective ways of doing things.

International activities
Bilateral cooperation
Multilateral cooperation
International comparisons

International activities

Increasing the international dimension of the Cour des comptes is one of the six priorities of the mandate of the First President Pierre Moscovici. This objective is part of the JF 2025 project.
The financial jurisdictions are active internationally through bilateral and multilateral cooperation with other supreme audit institutions (SAIs). They also contribute to international standardisation work and draw up external audit mandates for international organisations. Within the Cour des comptes, the Directorate for International Relations, External Audit and Francophonie (Driaef) is responsible for these issues.

Bilateral cooperation with Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI)

The financial jurisdictions contribute to the capacity building of young SAIs.

They also respond to requests from donors such as the World Bank or the European Commission.

Bilateral cooperation takes the form of long (Tunisia, Algeria) or short (Morocco) twinning arrangements under the aegis of the European Union, or cooperation agreements (Brazil, Niger, China, Chile, Senegal, etc.). The regional and territorial Courts of Audit (RTCAs) have concluded similar agreements with regional counterparts.

Finally, the Court is actively involved in peer reviews, both for itself and for others.

The Cour des comptes also occasionally receives foreign delegations of auditors, senior civil servants and politicians from other countries for exchanges on our missions.

Multilateral cooperation between ISC

The Court participates in a number of international bodies, including :
- Intosai (International organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions),
- Eurosai (European organisation of SAIs of public finance),
- Aisccuf (Association of French speaking SAIs),
- Eurorai (European organisation of Regional Public Finance Audit Institutions).

The Cour des comptes also provides the general secretariat of the Aisccuf (Association of French-speaking Supreme Audit Institutions), which is supported by the International organisation of the Francophonie and has over 40 members.

Within these bodies, the Court works on the issues of professionalisation and standardisation of practices and methods, at the same time as it promotes its jurisdictional model of public finance audit.

By being independent of the executive and legislative powers, the Cour des comptes is seen by young SAIs as a model to be emulated.

The Court is also a member of working groups.

International comparisons

The Cour des comptes regularly solicits the experience of foreign SAIs in evaluating public policies. These international benchmarking studies are largely carried out within the European framework; the Cour des comptes questions one or more of its counterparts on a subject of common interest that may relate either to data, methods and results of an audit in a given field, or to organisational issues.