The Court of Auditors confirms that the pandemic revitalized the Conference of Presidents, although with room for improvement

MADRID, 2 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Court of Auditors has highlighted in one of its reports that the Covid-19 pandemic "has relaunched" the forum of the Conference of Presidents, with a total of 19 extraordinary meetings for this reason, although it has detected areas for improvement, related with the lack of formalization and documentation of the meetings.

Of course, the supervisory body chaired by Enriqueta Chicano believes that work is already underway to correct these points, with the approval of a new internal regulation of the Conference of Presidents, which was ratified at the last meeting on the island of La Palma.

This is one of the conclusions reached by the Court of Accounts in the report that it approved a few weeks ago in which it audits the actions for multilateral cooperation relations between the General State Administration and the autonomous communities within the framework of the management of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Regarding the lack of formalization, the Court of Auditors alleges that the meetings of the Conference of Presidents that took place at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic were distinguished by their informal nature.

In fact, it points out that they were called urgently and in the General Directorate for Autonomous and Local Cooperation there are no calls with the agenda or the list of agreements "that should be made public at the end of each meeting, as it is established in the internal regulations of the Conference of Presidents".

The report also analyzes the meetings of the sectoral conferences during this period of the Covid-19 pandemic, detecting that these forums allowed "agile consultation in difficult situations".

However, as with the Conference of Presidents, the Court of Accounts has also found some "weaknesses" such as the lack of internal regulations or the lack of updating some of the existing ones and defects in the documentation and communication of the meetings.

For this reason, they ask to reinforce these aspects, although they recognize that some initiatives have already been started in this regard. In line, they point out that it is "necessary" to take into account the "importance" of "the voluntary nature of the administrations involved in its operating dynamics."

Another of the points analyzed by the Court of Accounts is the role of the Ministry of Territorial Policy in this work, ensuring that the role of this department is "relevant and must be strengthened."

"The specialized units integrated into the Ministry of Territorial Policy contribute to the operation of the multilateral cooperation bodies and to the coordination of the actions of the different bodies of the State Administration, providing information and experience".

Some weaknesses have also been identified, as well as recommendations for their correction and improvement, among them the explicit regulation of the role of the Ministry of Territorial Policy in the cooperation bodies or the decentralization of the tasks of updating information about cooperation bodies.