The 49th Governing Board meeting took place in Gdańsk (Poland) on 14-15 March 2018, kindly hosted by the SAI of Poland and preceded by a meeting of the EUROSAI Coordination Team,  held at Presidential Level.

The agenda was organized in different parts as follows:

 a)  General issues -where the Secretary General presented the 2017-2018 EUROSAI Activity Report;

 b) Setting up of the 2017-2023 EUROSAI Strategic Plan (ESP) –where the President of EUROSAI informed on the overall development of the ESP; the Operational Plan (OP) was discussed and the Portfolio’s holders descriptions were presented for approval; and a round table discussion on the main challenges of the development of the ESP took also place. In addition, the Project Groups on General Procedures for the ESP and EUROSAI regulations presented their products for the Governing Board’s approval.

c) Financial issues – the Secretary General reported on the 2017 EUROSAI financial information and on the financial requests received at the Secretariat for the Governing Board’s approval.

d) Activity of the EUROSAI Working Groups and Task Forces –the Chairs of the existing Working Groups on IT, Environmental Auditing, Audit of the Funds Allocated to Disasters and Catastrophes, and of the Task Forces on Audit and Ethics and on Municipality Audit explained the progress made on their working plans since the last Governing Board meeting.

e)  Relations with INTOSAI –information on INTOSAI, the next INCOSAI (2019), and key issues discussed at the last INTOSAI Governing Board meeting was provided. The Secretariat of the INTOSAI Donor cooperation informed on the possibilities of the Global Call for Proposals and suggested cooperation with EUROSAI in this regard.

f) Wrap up of the Operational Plan and submission for the Governing Board´s approval.

g) Other issues –information on the preparations of the XI EUROSAI Congress, to be held in the Czech Republic in 2020, and on the next meeting of the Governing Board was provided.

The main decisions taken and documents approved by the Governing Board were the followings:

1. The  descriptions of the governance portfolios - Overall Governance and Culture (SAI of Turkey); Relations with other INTOSAI Regional Organisations (SAI of Spain); Forward thinking and emerging issues (SAI of Finland); Relations with non-SAI stakeholders (SAI of the Netherlands); and Communication (SAI of Latvia) – were approved .

 2. The General Procedures for the ESP, the update of the EUROSAI Financial Rules and two resolutions (by which the Governing Board delegated certain decisions regarding the holding of temporary activities and the granting of financial backing from the EUROSAI Budget) were also approved.

3. The Operational Plan of Strategic Goals 1 and 2 were also approved by the Governing Board, as well as the updated list of training events (in both cases with some amendments discussed during the meeting). The OP will be uploaded in the EUROSAI website as soon as it is available.

4. The Operational Plans of the Governance Portfolios were also approved, following a discussion as a result of which it was agreed that the projects related to the refreshment of the layout of the website and the launching of the editorial board of the magazine would be excluded from the OP and put on hold until the Governing Board receives the results of the analysis to be conducted by the Latvian colleagues regarding the EUROSAI Communication Framework and agrees on the way forward.

5. The Terms of References for the organization of Joint Conferences between EUROSAI and ARABOSAI, ASOSAI and OLACEFS were approved. The Governing Board also took note of the Framework with AFROSAI that had been prepared by the Secretariat, in which the main areas and initiatives to be carried out for the implementation of the MoU signed between EUROSAI and AFROSAI were outlined.

6. The two financial requests from the 2018-2020 EUROSAI budget that had been received at the Secretariat were granted. They referred to the 16^th meeting and seminar of the WGEA (Bratislava, from 25 to 28 September 2018) and the 4^th meeting and seminar of the WGAFDC (Chisinau, on 29-30 March 2018).

7.  The EUROSAI Governing Board approved a resolution by which it recognises the participation of the EUROSAI in the high-level expert group entitled the 'Environmental Compliance and Governance Forum' established by the European Commission by the European Commission’s Communication on 'EU actions to improve environmental compliance and governance', COM/2018/10, and a Decision, C(2018)10, and gives a mandate to the EUROSAI WGEA Chair to represent EUROSAI in communication with the European Commission in the above mentioned issues and later to nominate as well as call back experts from the EUROSAI WGEA members to participate in the Environmental Compliance and Governance Forum.

8. A resolution related to the IntoSAINT was also approved, calling upon the Governing Board’s individual members to conduct an IntoSAINT self-assessment by the end of this Governing Board term (mid 2020).

9. In addition, the Governing Board accepted the kind offers of the SAI of Israel and Hungary to host the next Joint Conferences with ASOSAI (in 2019) and OLACEFS (in 2020). The tentative dates and themes proposed by the SAI of Israel were also supported and they will be submitted to ASOSAI for final agreement.

10. The Governing Board took note of the information about the 4^th YES Congress, which the SAI of UK had kindly offered to host during autumn 2019.

11. It was agreed that the next Governing Board meeting would be held in Riga, in 2019.