Following the 2013 Accounting Directive, small European Union (EU) companies are no longer required to have a statutory audit. However, the EU legislation allows Member States to impose an audit on their small companies based on their specific circumstances.

This publication follows up on our 2016 Factsheet and presents the current audit exemption thresholds in Europe and how several countries amended them over the last few years. In addition, we present how the thresholds changed over the last 15 years.

Our survey results show that 5 European countries lowered their audit exemption thresholds while 4 countries increased them between 2016 and 2021. Overall, there was no clear upward or downward trend in the development of the thresholds in this period.

In the longer-term, however, we noted a clear increase in the thresholds in the majority of European countries. On average, countries’ thresholds for balance sheet and net turnover tripled between 2006 and 2021. More specifically, 23 countries increased the threshold for their balance sheet amount and 22 countries increased the threshold for the net turnover in this period. We also found diverging national policies and views on auditing smaller entities.