As a result of the financial crisis in recent years, it became clear that certain financial aspects, as well as the supervision thereof, were not functioning as was expected and, in this sense, the European Commission in order to improve the relevance of the same and strengthen the independence of auditing.
The main objectives of this reform were as follows:
On 16 April 2014, the European Parliament approved two texts, in the form of a Directive and a Regulation, which will come into force on 17 June 2016:
a)The Directive, amending the text of the prevailing Directive (2006/43/EC), contains a series of new requirements and amendments of those already existing governing any audit performed in a Member State of the EU and certain requirements applied to Public Interest Entities (PIEs)
b)The Regulation contains a series of additional requirements only applicable to audits which are obligatory or legally established for PIEs.
In accordance with the reform of the rule applicable to the auditing sector, the European Directive obliges Member States to comply with the adaptation of their national legislation within a maximum period of 2 years, allowing the national authorities to choose the form and means of complying with such adaptation.
On the contrary, a Regulation is directly binding on any EU member since it is directly applicable to all Member States with no need for any national transposition measures. However, options exist which are available in the Auditing Regulation from which the competent authorities of the Member States must choose.
Some of the countries of the EU have already completed the adaptation of their local norms to this new European legislation (e.g.: Spain, Portugal, etc.), although, in other countries, this adaptation is still in progress, despite such legislation having to come into force on June 17, 2016.
José Manuel Teruel
Technical Director and Quality Control manager at Auren