EU Auditors issues report on the EU’s advisory bodies

On Thursday, 26 March, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) will publish a special report examining whether the work of the European Economic and Social Committee and of the European Committee of the Regions effectively support participatory governance in the EU.

Within the EU institutional framework, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) provide opinions on proposed EU legislation. The EESC represents employers, workers and civil society organisations, while the CoR represents elected local and regional authorities.

The auditors focused on the advisory bodies’ core work to contribute to participatory democracy at the EU level, and assessed the processes used by both advisory bodies designed to support:

• the quality and impact of their opinions;
• the delivery of opinions in time to contribute to the legislative process;
• the analysis of how their views are considered by institutional stakeholders during the legislative process.

The report and press release will be published on the ECA website eca.europa.eu at 5:00 p.m. CET on Thursday 26 March. The ECA member responsible for this report is Katarína Kaszasová.​

The ECA’s special reports set out the results of its audits of EU policies and programmes or management topics related to specific budgetary areas. The ECA selects and designs these audit tasks to be of maximum impact by considering the risks to performance or compliance, the level of income or spending involved, forthcoming developments and political and public interest.​