Debating Spanish audit legislation: the audit law of 1988

Abstract

In 1988 Spanish politicians enacted legislation to adapt national audit practices to the European Community's Eighth Directive. The 1988 Audit Law was debated extensively in Spain's Congress of Deputies. Excerpts from the political exchanges are employed in the paper to address two issues. First, the debates give some indication of the ways in which the politicians wrestled with the details of the legislation in order to establish a future audit framework considered appropriate for Spain. The paper can be considered, therefore, as an attempt to contribute to a more fuller understanding of one nation's efforts to implement EC Directives. Second, the issue of understanding the changing of Spanish audit legislation is examined from a further perspective. Both the political debates and specific details of the Audit Law are used as a basis for reconsidering one aspect of other work (García-Benau and Humphrey, 1992) which examined the same legislative changes. Whereas their analysis suggested to them a certain ‘innocence’ as regards Spanish attitudes towards the potentialities of financial reporting, our material questions the generality of such a conclusion.