06 March 2013

European Commission: Eurostat report on IPSAS implementation by EU Member States

The Commission has forwarded its assessment to the Council and European Parliament. The report [see below], which is accompanied by a staff working document, is based on information received through consultations with Commission services, international organisations, Member States’ experts and other interested parties.

Taking into account the views that Member State authorities and others put forward in the public consultation, the overall conclusion is twofold. On the one hand, it seems clear that IPSAS cannot easily be implemented in EU Member States as it stands currently. On the other hand, the IPSAS standards represent an indisputable reference for potential EU harmonized public sector accounts. On the one hand, the following concerns will need to be addressed:

• Currently, the IPSAS standards do not describe sufficiently precisely the accounting practices to be followed, taking into account that some of them offer the possibility of choosing between alternative accounting treatments, which would limit harmonisation in practice;
• At its current state of development, the suite of standards is not complete in terms of coverage or its practical applicability to some important types of government flows, such as taxes and social benefits, and does not take sufficient account of the specific needs, characteristics and interests of public-sector reporting. A major issue is the capacity of IPSAS to resolve the problem of consolidating accounts on the basis of the definition used for general government, which is now a core concept of fiscal monitoring in the EU;
• At present, IPSAS can also be regarded as insufficiently stable, since it is expected that some standards will need to be updated once work is completed on the current project of completing the IPSAS conceptual framework, expected in 2014; and
• At present, the governance of IPSAS suffers from insufficient participation from EU public-sector accounting authorities. During 2012, the governance framework of IPSAS was being reviewed to address issues of concern to stakeholders. Any reform should ensure that the independence of the standard-setting process is strengthened, while public-sector-specific needs are effectively addressed. In addition, the IPSASB currently seems to have insufficient resources to ensure that it can meet with the necessary speed and flexibility the demand for new standards and guidance on emerging issues in the evolving fiscal climate, particularly in the wake of the crisis.

On the other hand, most stakeholders agree that IPSAS would be suitable as a reference framework for the future development of a set of European Public Sector Accounting Standards, referred to below as ‘EPSAS’.

Press release

Report

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