Like a glacier, the European Commission is slowly moving to deal with the auditing profession for their controversial role in the economic crisis, and generally in relation to the profession’s structural faults.

As I have written before, it is about time that this issue came under the spotlight.

Last week, the commissioner for the internal market, Michel Barnier, outlined to an auditors’ conference the steps he is proposing to take in legislation scheduled for this November, following the publication of a green paper last year.

He dealt with three separate issues.

First, he concentrated on the independence of the profession. He didn’t mince words.

He said that several stakeholders didn’t have confidence in company accounts because of lack of confidence in the independence of the auditor.

Auditors are too closely tied to the companies they audit.

He claimed that the finance director of a big European company had said that he expected a certain docility from his auditor.

And what about the companies which keep the same auditor for decades - or even more than a century - without regular and transparent selection procedures?

His proposed solutions include obligatory rotation of auditors after a certain period of time, ensuring a balance between stability and rotation.

He was also opposed to the excessive intimacy between auditor and audited in the supply of non-audit services, which usually generate more income than the audit itself.

How can an auditor judge a company in complete independence when that same auditor is advising the company on its corporate development strategy?

He spoke of limiting, or perhaps forbidding, non-audit services.

He wanted common EU rules on this, and even spoke dreamily of pure audit firms, which could open the market to smaller players that have no chance of competing with the Big Four.

He said the Commission were still contemplating this, and its proportionality in relation to the challenges.

His second theme was about opening the auditor market. A generation ago, there were eight big firms.

Today the Big Four control about 80% of European quoted companies.

In certain member states, it is worse, since there are only a Big Three or even Big Two.

In Germany, only two firms hold 90% of the work of DAX 30 companies. In Spain, there is really only a Big One, which audits the big banks and 58% of the market.

He looked forward to more actors in the market (he drew comparisons to the credit rating agency market, where there are a Big Three, and where the Commission also wants to act).

He drew attention to current developments where the position is growing even worse - for instance, PriceWaterhouseCooper is buying Grant Thornton in Denmark - and said that the purchase of mid-sized firms by the Big Four is worrying for obvious reasons of reducing competition.

The solutions being considered by the Commission are: mandatory joint audits (as happen in France), mandatory rotation and re-tendering, and review of ‘Big Four only clauses’ (which he called unacceptable).

Finally, the Commission wants a more integrated European market, to free up current practices - for instance, a European passport for auditors, to avoid an auditor having to pass new exams in each market in which he or she wishes to operate; automatic recognition of audit firms already established in another member state and a European quality label which would entitle its holders to audit companies of the biggest size.

It also wants harmonisation of audit norms across the EU (the Commission is already studying ways of ensuring that the member states introduce the International Standards on Auditing).

In all of this, the Commission wants to avoid additional burdens on small and medium enterprises, whether auditors or the audited.

These are strong words.

The Commission is taking the response to the financial crisis seriously in other areas, too, and he listed the various topics on which it is acting, including derivatives, bank capitalisation and credit rating agencies.

This is one of those fields where the Commission has a valuable role to play, since action among many rich and powerful countries hinders the financial services players from playing off one market against another.