Enhancing companies’ credibility through audit ensures that stakeholders make informed decisions based on these companies’ financial statements. In parallel, public oversight ensures audit quality. 

The revised European Union (EU) statutory audit rules significantly impact how the public oversight of statutory auditors and audit firms is organised. Designated national public oversight bodies have the ultimate responsibility for the oversight of the audit profession. They can delegate certain tasks to other authorities and professional bodies. 

This survey presents the impact of the 2014 EU audit legislation. Our findings show that the national public oversight bodies now carry out many activities previously in the competence of the professional bodies. 

This survey also provides an overview of how the public oversight is organised in each of the 27 EU Member States, Iceland, Norway and the United Kingdom, i.e. composition, funding, transparency and key activities of the national public oversight bodies and delegation of tasks to other bodies. 

This publication is based on the input of our members and it is part of a series of work done by Accountancy Europe on the 2014 rules on statutory audit. It is an updated version of our previous work:  

• 2015 publication Organisation of the Public Oversight of the Audit Profession in 23 European Countries which presents the status before Audit Reform, and  
• 2018 publication Organisation of the Public Oversight of the Audit Profession in Europe which presents the status after the Audit Reform