Brussels, 11/06/2010 (Agence Europe) - In a report on convergence in 2009 between International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) that apply in the European Union and the accounting standards used elsewhere in the world, the European Commission expresses concern about lack of commitment from the United States in this domain: “In the absence of a clear commitment to move towards adopting IFRS for US domestic issuers, both the credibility of the IFRS system and the participation of non-implementing countries in the governance structure of the IFRS Foundation may be called into question. The European Commission considers it important that the US SEC will reach a positive decision about the adoption of IFRS as soon as possible in 2011.” Pointing out that convergence talks were replaced for a while by more urgent issues surrounding the financial crisis, the Commission says that the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US should take a decision as soon as possible next year on the pursuit of work to enable the United States to start using IFRS. In February, the SEC said that US businesses quoted on stock exchanges in the US would not be able to apply IFRS until 2015. The G20 Finance Summit in Busan, South Korea, earlier this month urged the IASB (responsible for drawing up the IFRS) and its US counterpart, the FASB to redouble their efforts to agree on a single global accounting standards system.
The Commission report points out that Canada, China, South Korea and India have made progress in their convergence or adoption programmes and are all planning to move to IFRS in 2011, apart from China, which will introduce IFRS in 2012. The EU rules that the accounting standards currently used in all four countries are deemed equivalent to the EU rules until the end of 2011. Japan will decide in 2012 whether it will require Japanese companies quoted on Japanese stock exchanges to use IFRS in 2015 or 2016. Other countries, like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Taiwan, have announced that they will be migrating to IFRS. (M.B./transl.fl)