Il controllo tra amministrazione e giurisdizione. Corte dei conti e funzione di controllo

The Ph.D. thesis “The audit between administration and jurisdiction. Court of auditors and audit function” is divided into four chapters. After the introduction, related to „object, reasons and method of research‟, the first chapter concerns „the audit as example of the traditional tripartition of the activities of Public Administration‟; the second chapter examines in particular „special judge and auxiliary body: the Italian Court of auditors between devolvement and polymorphism‟; the third chapter relates to “the audit of Court of auditors between administration and jurisdiction”; the fourth and last chapter applies itself to the international and European audit principles, between procedure and substance‟. Traditionally, the audit was classified as a typical administrative activity, but the audit function of the Court of auditors shares only limited characteristics with such activities. The research deeply analyzes the parameters of administrative or jurisdictional nature of audit activity by the Court of auditors: the impugnability of audit acts, and the possibility to object, during audit proceedings, interlocutory questions of constitutional legitimacy and preliminary committal to the European Court of Justice. The audit activity of the Court of auditors is compared to the advisory activity, as some consolidated differences were overcome and now the same Court of auditors has specific advisory functions, which cause a question of compatibility with the jurisdictional ones (above all in cases of administrative and accounting liability trials), on the basis of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and of Italian Constitutional Court. In order to analyze the administrative or jurisdictional nature of audit activity, a helpful element of benchmark derives from the extraordinary appeal to the President of the Italian Republic, which has recently been reformed with the purpose to consolidate its jurisdictional characteristics. Beside audit analysis, the Court of auditors is scrutinized on its twofold nature of governative auxiliary body and special judge and on the consequent interrelations. The study of a European and international dimension, to which the last chapter is devoted, is linked to the above mentioned aspect. The different institutional audit models are analysed according to: the collective or individual nature, the gowned or lay status, the title of other jurisdictional functions, the different criteria used in the audit activity. Although audit activity is considered basic and related with the possibility to enjoy social rights through the fundamental right at a good use of public resources, it is necessary to report that the Italian Court of Auditors is criticized, because the advantages deriving from the audit activity are sometimes fewer than the costs required by such structured magistrature.