OSCE, Alm.del - 2012-13 - Bilag 16: Nyhedsbrev fra Ambassadør Andreas Nothelle, uge 5, 2013

PC Brief Week 5, 2013This week, there were meetings of the Permanent Council (PC), the Forum for Security Coopera-tion (FSC) and the Human Dimension Committee. Again, the ACMF did not meet. Despite worriesexpressed by the Secretariat, there does not seem to be a vigorous activity aimed at getting thebudget approved. There are, however, indications that Russia might be ready to accept the budgetproposal as it currently stands if other steps are taken to “re-balance the dimensions”, i.e. if Rus-sian requests for projects in the Human Dimension that are in Russia’s interest are accepted.Since these negotiations – if there are any – take place between individual delegations and behindclosed doors, it is difficult to get reliable information. Noteworthy is that the ODIHR has created anextra-budgetary project at the request of the Chairmanship entitled “Review of Electoral Legislationand Practice of OSCE participating States”, a long-standing request by Russia. The 100 000 Europroject, the outcome of which is meant to be publicly available, still lacks funding.The Chairmanship has also asked for participating States to present candidates for External Audi-tor. For the past years, the Accounting Chamber of Ukraine had been the “external” auditor. In thiscontext, it should be pointed out that the PA has consistently called for independent professionaloutside auditing. In 2005, the UK National Audit Office, at the end of its term as OSCE Auditors,recommended that the OSCE review its arrangements for engaging external audit services in linewith best practice principles advocated by the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institu-tions (INTOSAI). Specific recommendations included introducing open and competitive tenderingbased on assessment against "objective and competitively assessed criteria such as technicalquality, experience and price", extending the period of appointment and "secur[ing] a demonstrablyobjective and independent audit process", overseen by an independent Audit Committee.On-site auditing in OSCE Institutions and missions rarely happens (the ODIHR received the exter-nal auditors in Warsaw once in the past four years, and although apparently very critical, the reportabout the visit was not made available to participating States that requested it). Auditing is mainlyfocusing on the comparison of bills and financial statements. There is no performance-related au-diting. The Audit Committee, which is mandated to check the effectiveness of the OSCE’s auditingsystem, criticized, in its last report, the absence of a consolidated financial regulation covering allfinancial aspects. One of the main problems for the auditors is that for more than ten years theOSCE has failed to revise and modernize its financial guidelines, despite annual appeals by theauditors. Many feel that the absence of agreed and transparent guidelines for the involvement ofexternal consultants creates a potential for misuse of public funds. The report also calls – inter alia– for further improvements in the recording of exceptions from existing rules, criticizing “that 41exception requests related to financial and material matters were approved by the Director of theODIHR in 2011; … of those 41 approved exception reports, 23 are not included in the exceptionreport summary and 21 of them have been recorded in the central information system some fivemonths after 2011 ended.”

Special Representative