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The Court of Auditors was created by the 1975 Budgetary Treaty and was formally established on 18 October 1977, holding its first session a week later. At that time the Court was not a formal institution, it was an external body designed to audit the finances of the European Communities. It replaced two separate audit bodies, one which dealt with the finances of the European Economic Community and Euratom and one which dealt with the European Coal and Steel Community.
The Court did not have a defined legal status until the Treaty of Maastricht when it was made the fifth institution, the first new institution since the founding of the Community. By becoming an institution it gained some new powers, such as the ability to bring actions before the European Court of Justice (ECJ). However its audit power related only to the European Community pillar of the EU, but under the Treaty of Amsterdam it gained the full power to audit finances of the whole of the EU.
Read more about this topic: Court Of Auditors
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