Why European CPD Keeps Landing on 120 Hours Over Three Years

Something odd happens when you line up European CPD requirements side by side. France, Spain, Poland, Portugal, Austria and Greece all require 120 hours over three years for statutory auditors. Czechia requires 40 hours a year, which is 120 over three years by another route. Romania required 120 over three years until it restructured in 2025. Romania’s accountancy body sets 120 over three years as well.

That is not a coincidence, and it is not EU law either. The EU directive behind all of these regimes sets no number at all. The figure they have converged on is an illustration in the application material of an international education standard that binds none of these individuals. Understanding how that happened explains most of what is confusing about European CPD.

Where 120 actually comes from

IFAC’s International Education Standard 7 deals with continuing professional development for professional accountants. The commonly cited benchmark attached to it is 120 hours over each rolling three-year period, of which 60 verifiable, with at least 20 hours a year.

Two things about that figure are routinely misreported, and both matter here:

• It is an illustration in application material, not a requirement. IES 7 permits member bodies to measure development by input, by output, or by a combination. The 120 hours is one worked example of an input-based approach.
• IES 7 binds member bodies, not individual accountants. It is made binding on those bodies through IFAC’s Statements of Membership Obligations, and the obligation it creates is to adopt and implement — not a duty owed by any individual to IFAC.

We set both points out in our guides to where accountant CPD requirements come from and how SMO 2 makes IES 7 binding.

So no European accountant owes 120 hours because of IES 7. They owe whatever their national instrument says — and a striking number of national instruments say 120.

The convergence, country by country

Every figure below is from the national instrument, not from IFAC:

• France — 120 hours over three consecutive years with at least 20 in one year, in the Code de commerce. See commissaires aux comptes CPD.
• Spain — 120 hours over three years with a minimum of 30 a year. See Spanish auditores de cuentas.
• Poland — 120 lesson hours over three consecutive calendar years, of which at least 72 delivered by the chamber or an entitled training unit, with 24 a year minimum and self-study capped at 48 per cycle. One lesson hour is 45 minutes.
• Portugal — auditors owe 120 credits per triennium of which at least 60 certified, plus 30 credits a year of which 20 certified. Certified accountants, a separate body, owe 30 credits a year with no cycle at all.
• Belgium — 120 hours per three calendar years with a 20-hour annual floor, for both the audit and the accountancy profession, under two separate norms.
• Denmark — 120 hours, or 90 plus an annual competence evaluation, on fixed three-year blocks running from 2009.
• Norway — 120 hours over the last three years, of which at least 90 structured. Authorised accountants owe 80.
• Finland — 120 hours over a rolling three years with 60 verifiable, on a July-to-June reporting year.
• Austria — in the pattern. 120 hours per three years with a 30-hour annual floor, and the only regime to add sustainability hours on top of the 120 rather than inside it. See Austria CPD requirements.
• Greece — in the pattern. 120 hours per three years, but with a 20-hour annual floor that is the loosest in the group. See Greece CPD requirements.
• Czechia — 120 by another route. 40 hours a year reaches the same total, but the statute frames 60 as a maximum rather than any figure as a minimum. See Czechia CPD requirements.
• Romania — left the pattern. Its pre-2025 rule was 120 over three years; the 2025 order recast it to an annual 40, keeping the total but removing the ability to back-load. See Romania CPD requirements.
• Switzerland — the control case. Geographically central, professionally integrated with Germany and Austria, and never inside the EU transposition process. It has no statutory figure at all, which is the strongest evidence that 120 travelled through a specific institutional channel. See Switzerland CPD requirements.
• Sweden — the exception that proves the point. Its regulator measures 100 verifiable hours over five years, because the obligation is pinned to a five-year authorisation renewal rather than a three-year cycle. Its professional body, meanwhile, lands on 120 over three.
• Austria — at least 120 hours within a three-year averaging period, 30 hours per calendar year, and at least 60 of the 120 in accounting and audit subjects.
• Greece — 120 hours per triennium with a minimum of 20 a year, under a regulatory act effective 31 December 2024.
• Czechia — 40 hours in each calendar year, with no cycle defined but shortfalls carried forward into the following year.
• Romania — the accountancy body sets 120 hours over three years with 60 verifiable; the audit regulator restructured from that frame to an annual 40 hours with 20 structured in 2025.

The French case is the most revealing. France sets 120 hours in law for statutory auditors — and for experts-comptables, who fall outside the audit perimeter, it sets no figure at all. The profession’s own body recommends 120 hours and expressly traces that recommendation to IES 7. So in one country you can see both mechanisms side by side: the number hard-coded in a gazette for one profession, and the same number arriving as a professional recommendation derived from the international illustration for the other. Our guide to why France sets no CPD hours in law for experts-comptables covers that.

Why the total is the least useful number

Here is the practical point. If all these jurisdictions require 120 hours, the total tells you almost nothing about what you actually have to do. The divergence is entirely in the composition rules, and that is where compliance is won or lost:

• Who may deliver it. Poland requires at least 72 of the 120 from the chamber or an entitled unit. Spain requires that 20% of teachers on accounting and audit courses be registered auditors themselves. Romania reserves certain fields to lecturers accredited by the regulator, which requires seven years of practical experience. A course can be excellent and still not count.
• How much may be self-directed. Poland caps self-study at 48 hours per cycle. Austria caps it at 10 hours per calendar year. Germany allows roughly half its target to be self-study including reading professional literature. The Swiss fiduciary association does not count self-study at all.
• What subjects are compelled. Austria requires 60 of its 120 in accounting and audit. Czechia requires 8 hours a year on audit. Spain requires 85 of 120 in accounting and auditing. Portugal’s auditors must have half their triennial hours in listed subject areas.
• Whether excess carries forward. Spain allows up to 15 hours to roll into the following year. Poland expressly allows none. Czechia carries shortfalls forward, increasing next year’s requirement. The Swiss regulation allows neither surplus nor catch-up.
• How it is counted. Poland and Austria count a 45-minute teaching unit as one hour. Spain caps a single day at 8 hours and discounts repeat attendance at the same course to 50% and then 25%.

Two practitioners in two countries can each do 120 hours of identical, high-quality training and only one of them complies.

A correction worth making: ethics quotas are rare

It is widely assumed that European CPD regimes mandate a block of ethics hours. Across the countries we have examined, almost none do.

Romania is the exception, with an explicit minimum of 2 structured hours a year on values, ethics and professional attitude. Everywhere else ethics appears as a content area inside a broader requirement rather than as a floor: Czechia folds it into an 8-hour audit block, Portugal’s auditors catch it within a 50% subject-mix rule, and Italy’s accountancy body combines it with practice organisation, anti-money-laundering and mediation in a single 9-credit block. France sets none. Austria, Poland and Greece set none. Spain’s regulator never mentions ethics at all — though we should note the underlying regulation’s subject provisions could not be read, so that is “none found” rather than “none exists”.

So a statement that European regimes generally mandate ethics hours would be wrong. The one thing IES 7’s companion standards do push toward — ethical competence — is the thing national regimes have been least willing to quantify.

Sustainability is where the numbers are diverging again

If the 120-hour convergence is the settled past, sustainability assurance is the unsettled present, and the figures are nothing like each other:

• Austria — at least 40 further hours over three years, with a 10-hour annual floor, added by a regulation issued in July 2026.
• Poland — a proposed separate 24-hour cycle from 1 January 2027, of which at least 8 from an authorised provider, giving ESG-authorised auditors 144 hours per cycle across two settlement accounts. Still in consultation as draft resolutions.
• Romania — at least 6 hours a year, added in 2025.
• Greece — a one-off block of at least 30 hours of seminars, available only to auditors licensed before 1 January 2026.
• Italy — 25 credits a year for certified sustainability auditors, at least 10 in audit and 10 in sustainability. See Italian revisori legali.
• Czechia — no sustainability CPD hours at all. The chamber’s regulation sets 40 hours flat with no add-on.
• Germany — nothing in force as at March 2026, with two conflicting draft figures. See Germany’s CPD rules.

There is no international illustration for sustainability-assurance CPD for these regimes to converge on. The result is a spread from zero to forty.

What this means if you are planning training

Three practical conclusions:

Do not plan from the headline total. Plan from the delivery, subject and self-study rules, because those decide whether the hours count.

Do not assume an IFAC-aligned programme satisfies a national regime. The convergence on 120 is real, but the composition rules are national and several of them restrict who may deliver training.

Treat sustainability separately. It is a bolt-on in most places, with its own cycle in Poland and its own subject floor in Austria, Romania and Italy — and it is the part most likely to have changed since any given summary was written.

For the legal architecture underneath all of this, see our guide to the EU Statutory Audit Directive, which sets no CPD hours of its own.

Frequently asked questions

Does IFAC require 120 CPD hours? No. The figure is an illustration in IES 7’s application material, and IES 7 binds member bodies rather than individuals. Bodies may measure by input, output or a combination.

Why do so many European countries require 120 hours then? National instruments have converged on the international benchmark independently. Each country wrote its own rule; the totals match and the composition rules do not.

If I meet an IFAC-aligned 120 hours, am I compliant in Europe? Not necessarily. Several regimes restrict who may deliver qualifying training, cap self-study, and compel specific subjects.

Do European regimes require ethics hours? Very few. Romania sets 2 structured hours a year. Most treat ethics as a content area inside a broader block, and several set no quota at all.

What is changing? Sustainability assurance, with add-ons ranging from nothing in Czechia to 40 hours per three years in Austria, and a new separate cycle proposed in Poland from 2027.

Plan across jurisdictions with Learnsignal

If you practise in more than one European country, the useful question is never how many hours but which of them count where. Our certificated CPD courses are built to be evidenced against regimes that ask how training was delivered and how attendance was verified, not just how long it lasted. The international standard behind the convergence is published by IFAC.