Charlie McCreevy, European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, has welcomed the publication of a Work Plan between the Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR) and the United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) that outlines concrete measures to facilitate transatlantic financial activity within a sound and protective framework. This Work Plan is an important step in bringing about operational and supervisory cooperation between regulators to ensure consistent enforcement of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and US GAAP. The Work Plan also covers other areas such as the modernisation of financial reporting and disclosure and the discussion of risk management practices.
Commissioner McCreevy said: "I welcome this joint Work Plan, which is an important element in achieving consistent application and enforcement of IFRS and US GAAP. It is also an important step within the roadmap towards eliminating the need for reconciliation between IFRS and US GAAP. It remains crucial that regulators continue to work together to avoid any conflicting regulatory decisions on the application of IFRS.”
Consistent enforcement of IFRS
Consistent enforcement of IFRS is needed in order to achieve high quality, comparable financial statements across the 8,000 listed EU companies that have to apply IFRS.
It is also needed to create the conditions that eliminate the need for reconciliation of IFRS to US GAAP in the US under the “Roadmap” developed by SEC staff, by no later than 2009.
Cooperation in other areas
The Work Plan also includes further cooperation and exchanges of views on the evaluation of Information Technology (IT) solutions for the disclosure and storage of corporate information and for the development of regulatory platforms for risk management.
Progress review
Over the next couple of years the Commissioner and his staff will regularly
meet with CESR and the SEC to review progress under the Work Plan.
More
information on accounting policy in the EU is available at:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/accounting/index_en.htm
