Statutory auditors should adhere to the highest ethical standards and should be subject to professional ethics. This Directive aims at high-level to bring about harmonisation of statutory audit requirements as a result of lack of a harmonised approach to statutory auditing in the Community. This was the reason why the Commission proposed, in its 1998 Communication on the statutory audit in the European Union that a creation of a Committee on Auditing which could develop further action in close cooperation with the accounting profession and Member States be established.

The output/recommendation from the committee setup was a Recommendation was a set of Fundamental auditing Principles. The statutory audit requires adequate knowledge of matters such as company law, fiscal law and social law for Audit qualifications obtained by statutory auditors. In order to protect third parties, all approved auditors and audit firms should be entered in a register which is accessible to the public and which contains basic information concerning statutory auditors and audit firms. 


It is important to note that good audit quality contributes to the orderly functioning of markets by enhancing the integrity and efficiency of financial statements.