After almost every economic crisis and corporate scandal, political actors announce the need for stricter regulatory measures for financial markets and companies, in an attempt to appease their voters and defend their political agenda. Regarding the latest international financial crisis, the EU responded, among other things, with comprehensive regulation of the European audit market. In the context of auditor rotation, after 17 June 2016, the duration of audit engagements should not exceed a maximum of 10 years. In this paper, we therefore investigate whether there is empirical evidence behind the 10-year threshold—or is it simply arbitrary? Our aim is to evaluate the audit market reform by the European Union (EU) (Regulation (EU) No 537/2014 and Directive, 2014/56/EU) related to the objective of improving the quality of audits. Therefore, our article addresses the most crucial element of this reform, the implementation of a mandatory audit firm rotation for public interest entities (Regulation (EU) No 537/2014, Article 17). Based on a unique dataset of 11,834 firm observations from all listed companies within the EU between 2008 and 2017, we provide for the first time a discussion basis for the assessment of audit market interventions by the EU. Hence, we compare the new maximum durations with average audit tenure in the particular member states. Even where we present only descriptive results, our results at least indicate that the “magic number” 10 (years) could be more the result of a political process—i.e., a consent between the European institutions—rather than evidence based. Therefore, our findings shall serve as a first starting point in the discussion of a vast and interdisciplinary research field.

中文翻译：

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审计市场监管的政治决策：欧盟内部审计事务所任期和最长期限的经验证据

在几乎每一次经济危机和公司丑闻之后，政治参与者宣布有必要对金融市场和公司采取更严格的监管措施，以安抚选民并捍卫其政治议程。对于最近的国际金融危机，欧盟做出了回应，其中包括对欧洲审计市场的全面监管。在审计师轮换的背景下，2016年6月17日之后，审计师的任职期最长不得超过10年。因此，在本文中，我们调查10年阈值后是否有经验证据，还是仅仅是武断？我们的目的是评估欧盟（EU）537/2014号法规和2014/56 / EU指令与提高审计质量有关的审计市场改革。所以，我们的文章探讨了这项改革的最关键要素，即为公共利益实体实施强制性的会计师事务所轮换（第537/2014号欧盟法规，第17条）。基于2008年至2017年间来自欧盟所有上市公司的11,834项公司观察的独特数据集，我们首次为欧盟对审计市场干预措施的评估提供了讨论依据。因此，我们将新的最大持续时间与特定成员国的平均审计任期进行比较。即使仅给出描述性结果，我们的结果也至少表明“魔术数字” 10（年）可能更多是政治过程（即欧洲机构之间的同意）的结果，而不是基于证据的结果。所以，