The SIGMA Paper is drawn from a report on relations between Supreme Audit Institutions and parliamentary committees, prepared for the network of Presidents of the Supreme Audit Institutions of Central and Eastern Countries, Cyprus, Malta and the European Court of Auditors, as part of their efforts to prepare candidate countries for eventual membership of the European Union. It was written primarily for use by those organisations but SIGMA does believe it also has wider interest. The principal contributors of this paper were the Supreme Chamber of Control of Poland and the National Audit Office of Malta, represented by Jacek Mazur and Brian Vella respectively; supported by Jan Pieter Lingen and Chris Kok from the European Court of Auditors; SIGMA expert Harry Havens; former SIGMA staffer Bo Sandberg; and SIGMA staffer Nick Treen. Participating in the work of the liaison officers were the Supreme Audit Institutions of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia who all supplied valuable data to provide the basis of the report. In addition, the report incorporated material prepared by the Supreme Audit Institutions of Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, UK, the European Court of Auditors; and SIGMA.