Introducing Preventive Audit in Local Government : The Case of Greece

Although European countries other than Greece have already ceased the traditional type of audit in order to achieve sound public financial management, Greece still exercises an “a priori” audit in the expenses of public organizations. The “ex-ante” (a priori) audit in Greece has a long tradition with the exemption of local government for which this type was established relatively recently, namely in 2005 (for municipalities over 5.000 citizens). This paper aims to illustrate the results from the first period of implementation of ex-ante audit in the Greek municipalities