Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-24-Speech-4-061"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20080424.6.4-061"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Madam President, I would like to thank Members for their comments. It was certainly a very wide-ranging debate with diversity of views on many of the issues and we have taken note of them.
Mr Mitchell made an interesting point. I think the importance of what he said was that we do not want the IASB to come and say ‘an EU body or any other body’. We want to be an internationally accepted body – because this goal is well worth pursuing – and it needs to be an independent body. I think that should be taken as read, but with proper input from the various stakeholders.
May I remind everybody in the European Union that it was the EU which gave the IASB such importance. We were the largest jurisdiction to say as from 2005 that the IFRS would become the rule for listed companies. It was some years ago that this decision was made, together with the European Parliament, and that in itself gave greater importance to the IASB and to the process.
I would say – and I have said this repeatedly to the IASB also – that road testing – you can call it impact analysis – should be done before standards are adopted, particularly by the IASB, and with input from the EU and other bodies as well. We should not be waiting until the standards are endorsed by the IASB. We had the job here of either agreeing to them or rejecting them. We do not have the role of changing them. I think that they should be road tested enough beforehand to see if there are going to be problems, rather than finding out about serious problems after the whole IASB process has been gone through. We made this point repeatedly to the IASB. Hopefully, I think the new governance structures have been appreciated by most of us.
I accept that more work needs to be done in this particular area but that will lead to fewer problems in the future. Hopefully we will arrive some day at a situation where these things will be more or less automatic and not cause any great headaches for anybody because all the work will have been done previously. We will not have difficulties then.
I would like to emphasise again that high-quality international accounting standards are crucial for the effective functioning of both the European and global capital markets. The process through which these standards are developed should therefore be subject to robust governance. It should be characterised by a high level of transparency and it should ensure a balanced consideration of stakeholder interests.
The IASCF and the IASB have over recent years implemented significant reforms of their internal procedures but I cannot deny that further improvements are necessary. Moreover, I recognise that we in Europe should better organise ourselves to guide and provide input to the IASB standard-setting process. In short, even if the IASB’s governance and due process were perfect, international accounting standards will only meet the needs of European stakeholders if their views are presented in a coherent, a convincing and a timely manner.
Nearly all speakers referred to the question of IFRSs for SMEs and I repeat again that there is no legal basis for its endorsement in Europe at present. If we were to do so, it would need codecision with the European Parliament. Can I just repeat, as I have said many times about IFRSs for SMEs, when the IASB was going about this particular work I made it quite clear in a number of speeches that they should not assume that there was going to be automatic endorsement from the EU for this particular project. We would only recommend it if it was simple and effective and met the needs of SMEs.
They were told that when they were doing their work. Their first exposure draft has been presented. I then took the opportunity of telling them that it did not meet those criteria and in the present state of affairs I could not possibly even consider recommending it for SMEs because it was neither simple nor effective. That remains my position but, in line with what others have said and Mr Purvis in particular, it would probably be a good thing if there was a simple effective IFRS for SMEs – but only on that particular basis.
The idea is a good one. I do not want to knock the idea at all, but I am not going to endorse now or in the future anything for SMEs that is just more complex and which no one understands. It is not needed. I take this opportunity of repeating again in Parliament what I have said on many occasions about this.
Ms van den Burg mentioned the question of XBRL. We are working with the securities regulator to get consensus on the technical standards for business data and as a result of this dialogue the Commission may take further measures aiming at interoperability of regulatory information systems. XBRL could allow investors to take full advantage of IFRS. Any steps towards requiring the use of XBRL in the European Union should be subject to a thorough impact analysis, including the economic assessment of costs and benefits.
I have also discussed the matter with the SEC Chairman, Mr Chris Cox, during my recent visit to the United States and I support keeping this agenda point in our regulatory dialogue with the US authorities for the future. These standards will need to be internationally accepted, technologically independent and interoperable.
It is a very exciting development and I know Ms van den Burg has recently had exposure to all this. I took the same opportunity myself some months ago – getting experts to show me how it actually works. I think it is something that is quite revolutionary and something to be welcomed, but we will not do anything about it just yet until we have done other work."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples