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European Single Electronic Format (ESEF)

2025

ESEF updates:

On 8 January 2025 ESMA published the XBRL taxonomy files and an update to the ESEF Conformance Suite for 2024 reporting to facilitate the implementation of the ESEF Delegated Regulation. These publications are intended to assist software vendors and issuers in preparing the 2024 IFRS consolidated financial statements using the most up-to-date version of the ESEF format.

2024

ESEF updates:

Final Report on the draft Regulation Technical Standards amending Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/815 as regards the 2024 update of the taxonomy for the European Single Electronic Reporting (ESEF)

ESEF Reporting Manual update

2024 European Common Enforcement Priorities for corporate reporting

ESMA has issued its annual European Common Supervisory Priorities (ECEP) Statement for reporting for 2024 corporate reporting. ESMA and national competent authorities will focus in 2025 on the following topics:

  • International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) financial statements: liquidity considerations and accounting policies; judgments, and significant estimates.
  • Sustainability statements: materiality considerations in reporting under the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS); scope and structure of the sustainability statements; and disclosures related to Article 8 of the Taxonomy Regulation;
  • ESEF digital reporting: common errors in financial statement filings,

2023

ESEF updates:

ESEF Conformance Suite 2023

2023 ECEP Package

ESMA has issued its annual European Common Enforcement Priorities (ECEP) Statement for 2023, which sets out the expectations of ESMA and national competent authorities with regard to specific areas of focus for enforcement of the annual financial reports of issuers, including financial and sustainability reporting, ESEF reporting and Alternative Performance Measures (APMs). In particular, for the 2023 ECEP, the focus is on cross-cutting topics, such as climate and environmental-related matters and the macroeconomic environment. Given the importance of climate and environmental-related matters for financial market participants (in particular issuers and investors), ESMA has published, together with the 2023 ECEP, a fact-finding exercise addressing the implementation of the Taxonomy Regulation and a report on disclosures of climate matters in IFRS Financial Statements.

2022

ESEF updates:

2021

ESEF Reporting Manual update

2020

ESEF updates:

2019

On 29 May 2019, Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/815 of 17 December 2018 supplementing Directive 2004/109/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council with regard to regulatory technical standards on the specification of a single electronic reporting format (‘the ESEF Delegated Regulation’) was published in the Official Journal of the European Union.

Pursuant to Article 4(7) of Directive 2004/109/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 December 2004 on the harmonisation of transparency requirements in relation to information about issuers whose securities are admitted to trading on a regulated market and amending Directive 2001/34/EC, as amended, all annual financial reports must be prepared in a single electronic reporting format.

The ESEF Delegated Regulation specifies the single electronic reporting format to be used for the preparation of annual financial reports by issuers. It requires issuers to prepare their entire financial reports in the Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) format. XHTML is a freely usable electronic reporting format that is supported by common web browsers.

Where annual financial reports include consolidated financial statements prepared under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), issuers must tag these consolidated financial statements using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), with the tags embedded in the XHTML document version of the annual financial report using the Inline XBRL format. XBRL is machine-readable and allows for the automated consumption of large amount of information.

The ESEF Delegated Regulation applies to annual financial reports containing financial statements for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2020.

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