Financial control
Under financial control means the administrative action of the courts of audit and related offices . The aim of the financial control is to check the public budgets for correctness, correctness and economic efficiency and to uncover any deficiencies in the budget or economic management. Since this is a sovereign activity, this mandatory task is usually carried out with civil servants .
It can be distinguished
- Financial control in the EU - European Court of Auditors
- Financial control in the federal government - Federal Audit Office
- Financial control in the countries - national audit offices / audit office
- Financial control of the communities - Local Auditing Association , municipal supervision , community Prüfungsamt
- Financial control in the churches
- Financial control in companies - internal auditing
In the respective financial regulations, the administrative units are authorized to carry out audits. The most important prerequisites for a functioning financial control is the independence and separation of the financial control from the executive power .
The results of a financial control are, for example, audit notices, advisory statements, annual reports or memoranda. The latter are a compilation of the particularly significant audit results of a year and serve to relieve the executive through the legislature . In contrast to the audit notification, which only the audited body receives, annual reports or memoranda are also made public.
The price for the independence of the financial control is the inability to give the audited bodies instructions or specifications for budgetary and economic management. As a rule, it can only make recommendations without being able to implement them.
There is disagreement about the future direction of financial control. On the one hand, efforts can be seen that demonstrate a very early involvement of financial control in decision-making processes of the executive and legislative branches - which means that financial control acts as an advisor in advance. On the other hand, there are the representatives of traditional auditing , who consciously stay out of any political institutionalization in order to be able to maintain the maximum of independence in return.