The IFRS Foundation and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) have agreed a joint Statement of Protocols on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) to serve as the basis for future co‑operation.
The IFRS Foundation, through its independent standard-setting body, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), is committed to developing, in the public interest, a single set of high quality, global accounting standards that require transparent and comparable information in general purpose financial statements.
ESMA is responsible for managing a single rule book for EU financial markets and ensuring its consistent application across the EU.
The statement of protocols reaffirms existing levels of co-operation between the IFRS Foundation and ESMA, as well as describing additional areas of co-operation, including electronic reporting, the implementation of new standards and other emerging financial reporting issues.
Michel Prada, chairman of the IFRS Foundation Trustees said: ‘ESMA and the IFRS Foundation have a shared interest in ensuring that global accounting standards are of a high quality and are consistently applied across the EU and the rest of the global marketplace.
ESMA staff will continue to participate in IASB working groups as appropriate and will coordinates the fatal-flaw review by European enforcers of the IASB’s near final drafts of new standards and amendments.
The Foundation and ESMA will review this protocol after two years to assess the need for any revisions.
The Statement of Protocols is available to here http://www.ifrs.org/Use-around-the-world/Documents/ESMA-IFRS-Foundation-Statement-of-Protocols-July-2014.pdf