Amendments and Supplements to the Law on Audit
- Lithuania
- 09/03/2008
- Raidla Lejins & Norcous
On 3 July 2008, the Seimas amended and supplemented the Law on Audit. The law will come into force on 1 September 2008. The modifications were stimulated by the necessity to implicate the Directive 2006/43/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 May 2006 on statutory audits of annual accounts and consolidated accounts, amending Council Directives 78/660/EEC and 83/349/EEC and repealing Council Directive 84/253/EEC. The law establishes a new supervisory institution and creates a new system of public supervision, which must constitute high standards of the quality of annual reports audit. The point of the public supervisory system is the institution consisting of the independent persons, having enough knowledge on audit. However, these persons could not have been members of the audit institution at least for previous three years. The newly adopted law details the functions and guidelines of the activity of the newly established Audit and Accounting Service. As there were too many provisions, regulating the procedure of practice to the assistants of the auditors, the newly approved law abolishes the regulation of these matters and delegates the functions to set the requirements for the assistants of auditors to the Lithuanian Chamber of Auditors. The amendments to the Law on Audit also include special provisions for the statutory audits of public interest entities. Lastly, under the amended final provisions of the Law on Audit, while performing the audit, international audit standards and Professional Accountants’ Ethics Code will be applied from the beginning of January 2009.
