PIEs as presently defined in EU legislation are:

• entities whose transferable securities are admitted to trading on a regulated market,
• credit institutions,
• insurance undertakings, and
• entities designated by Member States as public-interest entities.

Therefore, Member States have the option to designate undertakings that are of significant public relevance because of the nature of their business, their size or the number of their employees as PIEs and thus expand the number of companies falling under the Accounting Directive or the Audit Directive.

FEE has surveyed PIE definitions in all EU Member States, Iceland, and Norway. The survey showed that

• there is a wide diversity of definitions of PIEs applicable across European countries with some countries having implemented the minimum requirements and others having included a number of other entities to their applicable PIE definition;
• as a consequence, the number of PIEs per European country is very variable;
• in most countries the PIE definition has not changed significantly over recent years; and
• in the context of implementing the 2013 Accounting Directive and the 2014 Audit Directive, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK are considering extending the definition while Spain and Denmark might see a reduction in scope.

The FEE survey offers several tables and charts showing PIE definitions and the number of PIEs, describes changes that can be anticipated and contains an appendix with the exact definition of a PIE for each of the countries surveyed.

Please click to access the survey on the FEE website.