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Accountancy Europe agrees that assurance and possibly other forms of involvement by a professional practitioner can play an essential role in enhancing credibility and trust in EER reports. This might also prevent unreliable information from being used as a marketing communication to enhance the organisation’s reputation.
EER is a broad subject. There is currently a broad range of different EER reports, addressing different subject matters, for the attention of different users; this makes it difficult to achieve consistency. The immature and evolving environment, leading to inconsistent reports, poses a challenge for assurance providers. Accountancy Europe welcomes the support from the IAASB on how to address this challenge.
Indeed, there is a need to address this matter as highlighted in the comments received to Accountancy Europe´s Cogito Paper on the Future of Corporate Reporting. Many respondents wonder how to add credibility to other forms of reporting, such as non-financial reporting. Respondents are also interested in new ways of reporting such as electronic reporting.
The discussion paper sets out the key challenges well and, although it could be possible to address these challenges, the IAASB cannot solve these alone. The various stakeholders will need to accept that they have also a role to play in this. If Accountancy Europe was to single out areas to address as a priority, these would be: the scope of EER engagements, the suitability of criteria, materiality and the form of an assurance report or report on any other type of service in this context. For instance, one essential area of investigation is regarding for which elements of an integrated report the completeness criterion is applicable; this will require cooperation between all relevant standard setters and cannot be achieved by the IAASB itself.