According to art. 287 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) (previously art. 248 of the Treaty establishing the European Community) the European Court of Auditors (ECA) audits the annual accounts of the EU agencies, decentralised bodies and joint undertakings, which comprises the financial statements and the reports on the implementation of the budget for the financial year ending on 31 December of the previous year. Following the audit, the ECA provides the European Parliament with an opinion on the reliabilty of the accounts and the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions. The results of the audits are presented in Specific Annual Reports (also known as SAR or RAS, the French acronym for Rapports annuels spécifiques). Until 2010 (for audits relating to the 2009 financial year) the SARs were first discussed at the level of the Audit Group and then adopted by the Court (or "Collège"). After this year SARs have been adopted by the Audit Group IV (called Chamber IV from 2016), without further reading by the Court. As from 2019 (for SAR regarding the 2018 financial year), only four SARs are published: one for all the agencies, one for all the joint undertakings, one for the European Schools and one for the contingent liabilities of the Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM). The Secretariat of the Court (SCC) is in charge of keeping the original files ("dossiers") which document the preparation of the final SARs.

The series is made up of "dossiers" containing preparatory documents for the adoption of a Specific Annual Report on the accounts of the European Environment Agency for the financial year ended on 31 December of the previous year. The oldest dossiers were identified by the Agency's French name and/or acronym, as this was the working language of the series' creator, i.e., the Secretariat of the European Court of Auditors.

English, French

European Court of auditors historical archives (digitized copy)