Article 9U.K.Certification bodies
1.[The certification body shall be a public or private audit body designated by the Member State. Where it is a private audit body, and the applicable Union or national law so requires, it shall be selected by the Member State by means of a public tendering procedure. It shall provide an opinion, drawn up in accordance with internationally accepted audit standards, on the completeness, accuracy and veracity of the annual accounts of the paying agency, on the proper functioning of its internal control system and on the legality and regularity of the expenditure for which reimbursement has been requested from the Commission. That opinion shall also state whether the examination puts in doubt the assertions made in the management declaration.
The certification body shall have the necessary technical expertise. It shall be operationally independent from the paying agency and the coordinating body concerned as well as from the authority which has accredited that agency.
2.The Commission shall adopt implementing acts laying down rules on the tasks of the certification bodies, including the checks, and on the certificates and the reports, together with the documents accompanying them, to be drawn up by those bodies. In view of the need for maximum efficiency, for transaction testing and for professional audit judgment, in the context of an integrated approach, the implementing acts shall also lay down:
(a)the audit principles on which the opinions of the certification bodies are based, including an assessment of the risks, internal controls and the level of audit evidence required;
(b)the audit methods to be used, by the certification bodies, having regard to international standards on auditing, to deliver their opinions, including, where appropriate, the use of a single integrated sample for each population and, where appropriate, the possibility to accompany paying agencies' on-the-spot checks
Those implementing acts shall be adopted in accordance with the examination procedure referred to in Article 116(3).]