The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s financial markets regulator and supervisor, today published the update of its Reporting Manual on the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) supporting a harmonised approach for the preparation of annual financial reports. ESMA has also updated the Annex II of the Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) on ESEF.
The updated Manual provides technical improvements and guidance to facilitate the analysis and comparison of the data, such as:
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recommendations when tagging empty fields or dash symbols;
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clarifying that extension elements should be anchored to core elements sharing the same data type;
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advising on practices to further improve the readability of the information extracted from a block tag; and,
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encouraging the use of unique identifiers for each tagged fact.
The Manual intends to promote a harmonised and consistent approach for the preparation of annual financial reports in the format specified in the RTS on ESEF, providing guidance on common issues that may be encountered when creating ESEF documents, and explaining how to address them.
Next steps
Issuers are expected to follow the guidance provided when preparing their 2024 annual financial reports. Software firms are also expected to follow the guidance when developing software used for the preparation of annual financial reports in Inline XBRL.
Correction
On 28 May 2024, ESMA published the Final Report proposing amendments to the RTS on ESEF to align the ESEF taxonomy with the updates to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Taxonomy and with new XBRL specifications.
The Annex II contained an error in the Table “Mandatory elements of the core taxonomy to be marked up for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2025”, where three taxonomy elements/labels related to dividends were omitted from the list of mandatory mark-ups. ESMA has updated today the table of Annex II and replaced the document on its website, as well as submitted a corrected version to the European Commission.
