The main specific activities of the Court of Accounts shall be the control and the external public audit. The external public audit shall include financial audit and performance audit.

Financial audit shall be conducted in keeping with the Annual activity program, for the concluded financial year, over the consolidated general budget execution accounts. Performance audit, covering use of state and public sector financial resources, shall be conducted based on the activity program, both at the end and during the unfolding of projects, programs, processes or activities under examination.

The Court of Accounts shall autonomously decide on its activity program and shall conduct its activity based on the "Annual Activity Program".

Control and external public audit activity planning shall be performed at two levels, multiannually (3 years) and annually. Multiannual planning shall allow the Court of Accounts to address its duty to audit all entities, the managers of which act as main authorizing officers of the general consolidated budget, at least once every three years. The Court of Accounts’ multiannual activity plan may be reviewed each year, based on the annual activity program draft.

The general principles, the aspects and issues considered in establishing the multiannual activity plan draft are: the independence, impartiality and objectivity of proposals wording, in keeping with which the selection of actions or entities by control/audit structures shall not depend on external, political or on any other group interests, shall be conducted impartially, that is without considering prejudices or subjective criteria; the realistic criterion involves including in the program those control/audit actions that may be conducted with the available resources and means; the powers and duties of the Court of Accounts; the obligation to conduct financial audit of all entities the managers of which have the capacity as main authorizing officers, at least once every three years, except for those under the central public administration, which shall be included in the plan on a yearly basis; the sectors/domains involving high risk; legislative, organizational or public management novelties; experience accumulated by the Court of Accounts during the previous years in the control/audit field; the overall size and structure of the sector under examination and of certain specific domains within it; the general suggestions or initiatives by the Parliament of Romania; the performance indicators established per programs; the internal and international good practice in the financial, accounting, taxation and audit domain; familiarity with the branch and sector within which the entities under the control/audit jurisdiction of the respective structure operate; the results of the previous examinations of the budget execution accounts of public institutions and of other entities under the jurisdiction of the respective structure, including the way the recommendations of the previous performance audit reports have been implemented; the changes within the entities that fall, according to law, under the examination jurisdiction of the Court of Accounts; other relevant information; the notifications and claims received by the Court of Accounts from natural or legal persons, news in the media or from other sources; assessment of the existing material and human resources at structures level.

On drafting the Annual Activity Program of the Court of Accounts, the following shall be considered, besides the issues taken into account on the multiannual planning: specific characteristics of the domain; including as a priority the control/audit actions provided by law for the Court of Accounts to conduct, the actions launched the previous year and not concluded by the year end, also considering the requests by the Parliament of Romania to launch certain control/audit actions, to examine the legality of certain notified aspects; the intimations and claims received by the Court of Accounts from natural and legal persons, on the activity of the entities under its examination jurisdiction, the information in the media and from other sources, depending on their nature and relevance; knowledge of the overall number of the budget execution annual accounts of the authorizing officers existing in the respective domain, of the net payments level incurred by them in the previous period, of the existing control/audit capacity, as well as of certain conjuncture-related priorities; the public entities/ programs/projects or activities that have not been subject to examination lately; the entities where the previous examinations revealed serious financial and accounting deficiencies relating to the inadequate management of public financial resources, failure to observe the law in the administration of the state public and private patrimony and / or of administrative and territorial units, inadequate work procedures, regardless of the expenditure volume recorded and reported by the respective entities; the entities where, following analysis of the reports and the organization and implementation of the internal public audit activity, submitted by the legal entities under the examination jurisdiction of the Court of Accounts, significant infringements have been found.

By way of exception, the same entity may be examined more than one time the same year, where the Parliament requests it – by decisions of the Chamber of Deputies or of the Senate – or if there are data on serious deficiencies at the level of the respective entity.

The final annual program draft is submitted to the vice-presidents and to the president of the Court of Accounts for analysis and to the Plenum for approval. Subsequent to the approval by the Plenum, the Annual Activity Program of the Court of Accounts is forwarded to the control/audit structures for implementation.

The Annual Activity Program may be subject to modifications considered absolutely necessary during its development, upon approval by the Plenum.