The proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Council Directives 78/660/EEC and 83/349/EEC

Our position

In advance of the vote in the European Parliament on the report to amend Directive 78/660/EC on the annual accounts of certain types of company, ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) and EFAA (the European Federation of Accountants and Auditors for small and medium-sized enterprises) wish to make the following comments on the proposal.  

Both ACCA and EFAA are committed to reducing administrative burdens for SMEs and making compliance easier and cheaper. We support efforts to reduce or eliminate burdens where their identifiable net benefits are exceeded by the costs of compliance. This position is shared by UEAPME, the voice of small businesses in Europe. 

We do not believe that allowing member states to exempt micro-companies from the current, standard requirements to prepare and publish annual accounts would achieve any significant reductions in compliance costs. The main effect of adoption would be to reduce the amount of corporate information which is freely available to users via the public record. This could have adverse consequences for cross-border comparability of performance, standards of financial management in small companies, result in a lack of transparency and, potentially, have implications for the incidence of financial crime.