Resumen de Controlling public expenditure in Greece

Evangelia Balta

• The existing Greek auditing system, which consists in the control of legality and regularity, could be briefly described as a system of a priori audit of public expen­diture and a posteriori audit of the accounts of the public accountants. The object of the present study is the preventive audit of public expenditure, which is catego­rized, depending on the State�s competent body that exercises it, in administrative and judicial, as well as its important aspects, such as the control over the expendi­ture of local government and on procurement of high economic value. Despite the fact that the ex ante control of public expenditure constitutes the most significant part of the public financial management control according to the current public fi­nancial system in Greece, in contemporary times, and even more so in the midst of a profound financial crisis, its effectiveness and expediency are strongly disputed, whereas there exists an international trend to limit and replace it with the sound fi­nancial management audit (performance audit).