Article 20Supervision of qualified trust service providers
1.Qualified trust service providers shall be audited at their own expense at least every 24 months by a conformity assessment body. The purpose of the audit shall be to confirm that the qualified trust service providers and the qualified trust services provided by them fulfil the requirements laid down in this Regulation. The qualified trust service providers shall submit the resulting conformity assessment report to the supervisory body within the period of three working days after receiving it.
2.Without prejudice to paragraph 1, the supervisory body may at any time audit or request a conformity assessment body to perform a conformity assessment of the qualified trust service providers, at the expense of those trust service providers, to confirm that they and the qualified trust services provided by them fulfil the requirements laid down in this Regulation. Where personal data protection rules appear to have been breached, the supervisory body shall inform the data protection authorities of the results of its audits.
3.Where the supervisory body requires the qualified trust service provider to remedy any failure to fulfil requirements under this Regulation and where that provider does not act accordingly, and if applicable within a time limit set by the supervisory body, the supervisory body, taking into account, in particular, the extent, duration and consequences of that failure, may withdraw the qualified status of that provider or of the affected service it provides and inform the body referred to in Article 22(3) for the purposes of updating the trusted lists referred to in Article 22(1). The supervisory body shall inform the qualified trust service provider of the withdrawal of its qualified status or of the qualified status of the service concerned.
4.The Commission may, by means of implementing acts, establish reference number of the following standards:
(a)accreditation of the conformity assessment bodies and for the conformity assessment report referred to in paragraph 1;
(b)auditing rules under which conformity assessment bodies will carry out their conformity assessment of the qualified trust service providers as referred to in paragraph 1.
Those implementing acts shall be adopted in accordance with the examination procedure referred to in Article 48(2).