The bill approved by cabinet to reform the audit office, creating a new audit board, will be submitted to the legal service for legal and technical examinations before the end of the year, Justice Minister Marios Hartsiotis said on Friday.
Speaking following a meeting with auditor-general Andreas Papaconstantinou, he said he would also hold meetings about the planned reforms with parliamentary parties and independent MPs this month or in November.
Once those meetings have been held, the bill will then be submitted to the legal service, and then once it has been declared valid by the legal service, it will be submitted to parliament.
“I want to think it will be done within this year,” he said, adding that another meeting with Papaconstantinou had been planned with the aim of ironing out some issues which had been identified in the bill.
“Specific views were expressed by [Papaconstantinou]. He had some of his own positions and some more general reservations, which we undertook to study thoroughly and in detail,” he said.
He added that the goal of the bill to reform the audit office, as well as the parallel bill aimed at reforming the legal service, is to “achieve the greatest possible consensus before they are even submitted to the legal service, and even more so before they are submitted to parliament.”
This consensus-finding, he said, will entail meetings with the legal service, the audit office, and MPs, as well as with the bar association, the institute of certified public accountants of Cyprus, and the Supreme Court.
He said these planned meetings have been mapped out “with the aim of achieving the greatest possible consensus in time, in relation to the content of the legislation in question, before it is forwarded on to parliament.
Papaconstantinou also spoke after the meeting, urging those involved in forming the new legislation to be “very careful so that the independence of the audit office, the image we send to the world, and also the work which will be done, is not only not affected, but is strengthened”.
“We have a common understanding regarding how we think about the audit office, how we want the institution to be strengthened, but we have identified some issues which will be put to the test both by common sense and by the constitution,” he said.
He added that the audit office is reacting “positively” to the idea of reform, and that it is not “scared of it”, but was keen to stress that “it must be done with great care”.
Asked where his reservations lie, he said it “would not be right at this time to refer to our reservations, because a change made to this bill could overturn its entire logic. It is not isolated. We have to see the proposal in its entirety”.
The government plans to establish an “audit board”, which will be composed of the auditor-general, the deputy auditor-general, and three other people. The five members of the audit board will also have maximum term lengths.
The move will bring Cyprus into line with 14 of the European Union’s member states in having a multi-member governing body of its supreme audit institution. Additionally, it will bring Cyprus into line with the 22 EU member states in which supreme audit institution governing body members are term limited.
The largest audit governing body in the EU is Greece’s Hellenic Court of Audit, which is comprised of 42 members.
The European Commission’s acting spokeswoman Jordis Ferroli said last month the commission is “closely monitoring” the planned reforms, saying developments will be monitored “in the context of the preparation” of its next annual report on the rule of law in Cyprus next year.
