International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are issued by an international private organisation, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). The EU has to endorse IFRS 'as they are' in order to be fully compliant, i.e. no changes can be made. Non-endorsement or carve-outs are pos...
International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are issued by an international private organisation, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). The EU has to endorse IFRS 'as they are' in order to be fully compliant, i.e. no changes can be made. Non-endorsement or carve-outs are possible, but then EU firms have still to comply with the full IFRS if they want to benefit from IFRS’ global acceptance, e.g. in the US, permitting a European company to use IFRS only without the need to adapt the accounting to national generally accepted accounting principles (national GAAP). In order to become binding law in the EU, they must be ‘endorsed’ in a specific procedure prescribed in Article 3(1) and 6 Regulation No 1606/2002 of the Parliament and of the Council and Article 5a(1)-(4) and Article 10 and 11 Council Decision 1999/468/EC, i.e. the ‘Regulatory Procedure with Scrutiny’. The Commission intends to align in due course the pre-Lisbon-Treaty Regulatory Procedure with Scrutiny to the new delegated/implementing acts procedure according to Articles 290 and 291 TFEU. All standards are adopted as Commission Regulations amending an annex to Commission Regulation No 1126/2008 to have directly binding effect without the need for national implementation. One important draft standard under discussion is IFRS 9, the new standard laying down how financial instruments are accounted for. It shall replace the current standard (IAS 39) which was criticised for not taking declining values of financial assets during the financial crisis adequately into account.
