Parliament has created a briefing paper outlining EU directives currently in force and how they are implemented in the UK to allow EU legislators to assess the task ahead of converting EU law into UK law, as outlined in the Great Repeal Bill as part of the Brexit process
There are approximately 19,000 EU legislative acts in force with the majority of these being directives, regulations, decisions and external agreements. The 263-page document outlines the 900 directives in force, almost all of which apply to the UK.
The Great Repeal Bill will convert EU law into UK law so that government and parliament can then decide how to handle them as UK, not EU, measures. Therefore most Statutory Instruments (SIs) implementing EU directives will continue come Brexit.
EU directives that are implemented by statue will be part of UK law but the relevant Acts of Parliament may have to be changed if they are based on EU law.
The EUs audit reform was introduced in June 2016 under the EU Audit Regulation & Directive (ARD) which the UK implemented as an SI known as the Statutory Auditors and Third Country Auditors Regulations 2016.
Under the new ARD regime, public interest entities have to put their audit out to tender at least every 10 years.
Another directive passed by the EU and implemented as an SI is the EU accounting directive which became part of the Companies Act 2006 and transposed as the Companies, Partnerships and Groups (Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2015.
This account directive is reflected in UK GAAP under FRS 102, the main reporting standard for the UK.
The EU VAT directive aligns VAT within the EU VAT area and specifies that VAT rates must be within a certain range. The original sixth VAT directive was updated on 26 November 2006 as the Council Directive 2006/12/EC.
The EU plans for future tax directives to clampdown on tax avoidance by multinationals, however the UK has already started to implement several measures such as interest deductibility, country-by-country reporting and loss relief reform.
Companies and other legal entities incorporated in EU member states will have to keep a register of beneficial owners from summer 2017. The law forms part of the Fourth Money Laundering Directive which was passed by the EU legislature on 20 May 2015 and echoes the ‘persons with significant control’ (PSC) register being introduced in the UK from January 2016 under the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015.
The EU has opted to not make their beneficial ownership register available in the public domain whereas in the UK it is available for everyone to see.
Legislating for Brexit: EU directives is available here.
The Great Repeal Bill white paper is available here.
