Jurisdictional SAIs have their historical origins in the European Middle Ages, when sovereigns established institutions to monitor the use of public finances. The first institutions of this type emerged in France under the reign of Philip V, who created the Chamber of Accounts in 1318, and in Spain, where the Tribunal de Cuentas was founded in 1437 under the reign of John II of Castile. These institutions, often directly attached to the monarch or a supreme authority, aimed to ensure the transparency of royal expenditures and to combat abuses in financial administration, and played a key role in the building of nation states.
During the 19th century, the oldest Courts of Accounts in their modern model were set up in Europe, notably in France (1807), Belgium (1831), Greece (1833), Portugal (1849) and Italy (1862). With the Courts of Audit of France and Belgium as the founding SAIs of INTOSAI in 1954, the jurisdictional model was always present in the landscape of international cooperation between SAIs. Indeed, SAIs with jurisdictional activities have always been active and influential in their respective INTOSAI regions, especially in Europe, Africa and Latin America.
However, it was not until 2015 that these SAIs equipped themselves with their first international cooperation framework, the Forum of Jurisdictional SAIs, established under the umbrella of the INTOSAI Working Group on Value and Benefists of SAIs (WGVBS) . The initiation of the Forum filled a perceived void and constituted a founding step on the path of multilateral collaboration between its members. It allowed the publication of the first international standards : INTOSAIP50 . Moreover, it revealed the needs and challenges of jurisdictional SAIs and the path that remains to be covered in the professional development of the community. As early as the Forum meeting in Lisbon in 2021, its institutional growth was considered and several possibilities were explored, including becoming a KSC working group within INTOSAI or creating a new Commission within the same organization.
At the 2023 annual meeting held in Bangkok, the Forum members launched the process of evolving the Forum and raising its status. This process resulted in the choice of creating a new JURISAI organization aspiring to be a related entity of INTOSAI. The JURISAI statutes were thus signed in Casablanca on June 27, 2023 and its first general assembly held in Paris on October 8, 2024.
