Scientific Bulletin – Economic Sciences, Volume 19/ Issue 1 This is an open-access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 38 THE SUPREME AUDIT INSTITUTION Diana Elena BRÎNZĂ 1 , Mihaela Iuliana DUMITRU 2 Faculty of Economics and Law, University of Pitești, Romania, diana.brinza@upit.ro Faculty of Economics and Law, University of Pitești, Romania, mihaela.dumitru@upit.ro Abstract: The work aims to present the internal audit activity at the level of public institutions, its scope and main objectives. On the other hand, it highlights the general methodology applicable to any internal audit mission. The pages of this Article show special features of the Supreme Audit Institution, the Court of Auditors, in the case of four EU Member States: France, Germany, Italy and Romania. For each individual State we have given information on the audited entities, the governing body, the organizational structure, the reports issued and the statement on the mission of the Court of Auditors. Keywords: internal audit, audit mission, audit report, supreme audit institution. JEL Classification Codes: M42. 1. INTRODUCTION Internal audit plays a very important role in achieving the objectives of public organizations while increasing resource efficiency, effectiveness and economy. EU SAIs are independent public bodies. Their independence from the legislature, executive and judiciary is enshrined in the constitution. Depending on their mandate, SAIs may conduct ex ante or ex post checks, to assess the legality and regularity of revenue and expenditure, as well as the economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of policies, programmes and measures, or the functioning of the public administration. Some SAIs also evaluate the impact of public policies and programmes (Public Audit in the European Union, 2019, p.9). 2. LITERATURE REVIEW The internal audit includes the examination and assessment of the adequacy and effectiveness of an organization's internal control system and the quality of the performance of the tasks assigned to each employee (Arens and Loebbecke, 2003, p. 904, quoted in Macarie and Moldovan, 2017, p. 15). Voiculescu (2016) considers that "the revised definition of internal audit focuses on the objective of internal audit, which is to add value to the organization and activation of the improvement of its activities through the foreseen objective insurance and consultancy services". The lack of adequate internal public audit or its only formal implementation in Romania, without having the capacity to identify in advance the risks to public institutions, can be one of the factors that have facilitated the most recent financial crisis (Oțetea, Tița and Ungureanu, 2013) and prolonged its effects.