Responsibilities of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board for the financial statements
The Executive Board is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of the financial statements in accordance with Part 9 of Book 2 of the Dutch Civil Code. Furthermore, the Executive Board is responsible for such internal control as the Executive Board determines is necessary to enable the preparation of the financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to errors or fraud.
As part of the preparation of the financial statements, the Executive Board is responsible for assessing the company’s ability to continue as a going concern. Based on the financial reporting framework mentioned, the Executive Board should prepare the financial statements using the going concern basis of accounting unless the Executive Board either intends to liquidate the Company or to cease operations, or has no realistic alternative but to do so. The Executive Board should disclose events and circumstances that may cast significant doubt on the company’s ability to continue as a going concern in the financial statements.
The Supervisory Board is responsible for overseeing the company’s financial reporting process.
Our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements
Our objective is to plan and perform the audit assignment in a manner that allows us to obtain sufficient and appropriate audit evidence for our opinion.
Our audit has been performed with a high, but not absolute, level of assurance, which means we may not have detected all material errors and fraud during our audit.
Misstatements can arise from fraud or errors and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of the financial statements. The materiality affects the nature, timing and extent of our audit procedures and the evaluation of the effect of identified misstatements on our opinion.
We have exercised professional judgement and have maintained professional scepticism throughout the audit, in accordance with Dutch Standards on Auditing, ethical requirements and independence requirements.
Our audit included e.g.:
- identifying and assessing the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to errors or fraud, designing and performing audit procedures responsive to those risks, and obtaining audit evidence that is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.
The risk of not detecting a material misstatement resulting from fraud is higher than for one resulting from errors, as fraud may involve collusion, forgery, intentional omissions, misrepresentations, or the override of internal control;
- obtaining an understanding of internal control relevant to the audit in order to design audit procedures that are appropriate in the circumstances, but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Company’s internal control;
- evaluating the appropriateness of accounting policies used and the reasonableness of accounting estimates and related disclosures made by the Executive Board;
- concluding on the appropriateness of management’s use of the going concern basis of accounting and based on the audit evidence obtained, whether a material uncertainty exists related to events or conditions that may cast significant doubt on the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern. If we conclude that a material uncertainty exists, we are required to draw attention in our auditor’s report to the related disclosures in the financial statements or, if such disclosures are inadequate, to modify our opinion. Our conclusions are based on the audit evidence obtained up to the date of our auditor’s report. However, future events or conditions may cause the company ceasing to continue as a going concern;
- evaluating the overall presentation, structure and content of the financial statements, including the disclosures; and
- evaluating whether the financial statements represent the underlying transactions and events in a manner that achieves fair presentation.
Because we are ultimately responsible for the opinion, we are also responsible for directing, supervising and performing the group audit. In this respect we have determined the nature and extent of the audit procedures to be carried out for group entities or operations. Decisive were the size and/or the risk profile of the group entities or operations. On this basis, we selected group entities or operations for which an audit or review had to be carried out on the complete set of financial information or specific items.
We communicate with those charged with governance regarding, among other matters, the planned scope and timing of the audit and significant audit findings, including any significant findings in internal control that we identify during our audit.
Groningen, 3 October 2019
KPMG Accountants N.V.
R.W. van Dijk RA
