Un audit externe indépendant ; une plus-value sur la gestion financière des administrations communales ?

Abstract

The financial crisis of 2008 is behind us but has always a negative impact on the world economy. European countries did not avoid the effects of the crisis and some states have been significantly hurt despite reforms and pacts of stability and growth. These situations lead to government austerity measures which currently affect each level of the economy including the public sector. The objective of this work is to measure the added value of an external and independent audit conducted by private auditing bodies in Belgian municipalities which was required for budgetary frameworks of the Member States in the council directive 2011/85/EU of 8 November 2011. The directive asks in particular “a complete and reliable public accounting practices for all sub-sectors of general government for the production of high-quality statistics to be comparable across Member States. Independent audits conducted by public institutions such as courts of auditors or by private auditing bodies should encourage best international practices”. The first part of this master thesis is an overview of the literature. The theoretical part gives a global overview of the municipalities in Belgium and their systems of control in place. The second part is more practical. A qualitative investigation and a conference at the National Bank of Belgium will introduce the opinion of people directly concerned by the council directive. Finally, the study confirms that an external and an independent audit is necessary to provide better statistics to Eurostat but the question of who will conduct this audit is not so simple that it seems and auditing bodies may tackle an unknown sector and create conflicts with public authorities.