Directive 2014/56 - Amendment of Directive 2006/43/EC on statutory audits of annual accounts and consolidated accounts - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

L 158/196

Directive 2006/43/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (3) lays down the conditions for the approval and registration of persons that carry out statutory audits, the rules on independence, objectivity and professional ethics applying to those persons, and the framework for their public oversight. However, it is necessary to further harmonise those rules at Union level in order to allow for greater transparency and predictability of the requirements applying to such persons and to enhance their independence and objectivity in the performance of their tasks. It is also important to increase the minimum level of convergence with respect to the auditing standards on the basis of which the statutory audits are carried out. Moreover, in order to reinforce investor protection, it is important to strengthen public oversight of statutory auditors and audit firms by enhancing the independence of Union public oversight authorities and conferring on them adequate powers, including investigative powers and the power to impose sanctions, with a view to detecting, deterring and preventing infringements of the applicable rules in the context of the provision by statutory auditors and audit firms of auditing services.

Because of the significant public relevance of public-interest entities, which arises from the scale and complexity of their business or from the nature of their business, the credibility of the audited financial statements of public-interest entities needs to be reinforced. Consequently, the special provisions for the statutory audits of public-interest entities set out in Directive 2006/43/EC have been further developed in Regulation (EU) No 537/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council (4). The provisions on statutory audits of public- interest entities laid down in this Directive should be applicable to statutory auditors and audit firms only in so far as they carry out statutory audits of such entities.

In accordance with the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), the internal market comprises an area without internal frontiers in which the free movement of goods and services and the freedom of establishment are ensured. It is necessary to enable statutory auditors and audit firms to develop their statutory audit service activities within the Union by making it possible for them to provide such services in a Member State other than that in which they were approved. Enabling statutory auditors and audit firms to provide statutory audits under their home-country professional titles in a host Member State addresses, in particular, the needs of groups of undertakings which, owing to the increasing trade flows resulting from the internal market, draw up financial statements in several Member States and are required to have them audited under Union law. The elimination of barriers to the development of statutory audit services between Member States would contribute to the integration of the Union audit market.

Statutory audit requires adequate knowledge of matters such as company law, fiscal law and social law which may...