Directive on Financial Reporting Adopted

05 May 2003

The Council adopted the Directive on annual and consolidated accounts of certain types of companies and insurance undertakings as amended by Parliament in first reading. The Directive provides an option for Members States to use facilitated adoption of International Accounting Standards (IAS) and application of these standards for certain companies.

The changes, approved by the European Parliament in January 2003, bring existing EU rules into line with current best practice. The amendments allow Member States which do not apply IAS to all companies to move towards similar, high quality financial reporting, and could therefore affect up to five million companies.

Commissioner Bolkestein said, 'I am delighted that the Directive has been adopted in a single reading. This Directive demonstrates Europe's commitment to transparent, high quality financial reporting, consistently applied across the EU. Shareholders, potential investors and the public need to know from companies' accounts exactly how well they are performing and to be able to compare like with like. '

Commission press release

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