EC accounting strategy for 2008 will focus on SMEs

  • European Union (old) Image

21 Mar 2007

In a speech yesterday to the European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee, Charlie McCreevy, the European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, outlined the Commission's internal market policy strategy for 2008. He noted that the strategy focuses on three areas – patents, company law, and accounting and auditing – and that the accounting strategy focuses on SMEs.

Click for Commissioner McCreevy's Remarks  (PDF 83k). An excerpt:

It should not come as a surprise that we need to reduce the administrative burdens in the areas of company law, accounting and auditing. The basic features of the market have changed: new technologies, the introduction of the euro, enlargement, globalisation and demographic developments have dramatically affected the overall context of European integration and brought about considerable pressure to adapt. The legal environment has also evolved with the adoption of international standards in the field of accounting and auditing and the development of the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice....

In the field of accounting and auditing, we are focusing on the possibilities of reducing costs for SMEs. Of course, we need to keep improving the quality of accounting and auditing in the EU. However, the existing rules demand administrative work which companies, and particularly small and medium-sized ones, find sometimes unnecessarily burdensome. Our job is to reconcile these different interests in the best possible way.

Correction list for hyphenation

These words serve as exceptions. Once entered, they are only hyphenated at the specified hyphenation points. Each word should be on a separate line.