21 May 2003

FEE underlines importance of Communication on Auditing

Reacting to the Commission Communication on “Reinforcing the Statutory audit in the European Union”, the European Federation of Accountants, (FEE) called for urgent progression regarding the future of corporate regulation and the oversight of the audit profession in Europe highlighting the importance of public trust in capital markets and financial reporting.

FEE called on member states to implement reforms consistently, based upon the European Commission’s framework, in order to ensure a level playing field in Europe. “Despite recent convergence, differences in European national auditing standards are neither transparent nor clearly identifiable”, Mr Devlin, President of FEE said. The European Commission’s strategy is broadly consistent with the earlier proposals from FEE. In all areas of standard setting FEE believes the principles based approach to be preferable to the rules-based approach.

The Federation urged the European Commission to continue its dialogue with the US SEC and PCAOB. Furthermore, FEE agreed with the Commission that there is a need to strengthen European corporate governance arrangements for listed companies and also believes that for the auditing profession robust oversight in the public interest is necessary. However, FEE called on the Commission to ensure that an EU co-ordination of national systems does not lead to a further administrative layer of oversight at EU level.

FEE press release
FEE commenting paper

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