Commission Decision of 29 July 2008 concerning a transitional period for audit activities of certain third country auditors and audit entities (notified under document number C(2008) 3942) (Text with EEA relevance) (2008/627/EC)

Article 1

1. Member States shall not apply Article 45 of Directive 2006/43/EC in relation to audit reports concerning annual accounts or consolidated accounts, as referred to in Article 45(1) of that Directive, for financial years starting during the period from 29 June 2008 to 1 July 2010, which are issued by auditors or audit entities from the third countries referred to in the Annex to this Decision, in cases where the third-country auditor or audit entity concerned provides the competent authorities of the Member State with all of the following:

(a) the name and address of the auditor or audit entity concerned and information about its legal structure;

(b) where the auditor or the audit entity belongs to a network, a description of the network;

(c) the auditing standards and independence requirements which have been applied to the audit concerned;

(d) a description of the internal quality control system of the audit entity;

(e) an indication of whether and when the last quality assurance review of the auditor or audit entity was carried out and necessary information about the outcome of the review. Where information about the outcome of the last quality assurance review is not public and such information cannot directly be provided by the competent authorities of the concerned third country, the competent authorities of Member States shall treat such information on a confidential basis.

2. Member States shall ensure that the public is informed about the name and address of auditors and audit entities concerned from the third countries referred to in the Annex to this Decision and about the fact that those third countries are not yet recognised as equivalent for the purposes of Directive 2006/43/EC. For these purposes, the competent authorities of Member States referred to in Article 45 of the Directive may also register the auditors and audit entities from the third countries referred to in the Annex.

3. Notwithstanding paragraph 1, Member States may apply their investigations and penalties systems to the auditors and audit entities from the third countries referred to in the Annex.

4. Paragraph 1 shall be without prejudice to cooperative arrangements on quality assurance reviews between the competent authorities of a Member State and the competent authorities of a third country referred to in the Annex provided that such an arrangement meets all the following criteria:

(a) it includes carrying out quality assurance reviews on the basis of equality of treatment;

(b) it has been communicated in advance to the Commission;

(c) it does not pre-empt any Commission decision under Article 47 of Directive 2006/43/EC.