Internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy has indicated that the European
Commission is likely to delay any decision on whether companies producing
accounts in US GAAP would be equivalent to international financial reporting
standards.
Speaking during a European Federation of Accountants’ seminar, McCreevy said
that it had received technical advice that ‘there would be need for more time
before major third country GAAPs could be considered fully equivalent with
IFRS’.
McCreevy added that a delay was his preferred choice as it would ‘align the
equivalence on both sides of the Atlantic and allow time for consolidating our
experience of working with IFRS in practice.
It is thought that the EC will not accept the filing of US GAAP accounts
until European companies are able to file IFRS accounts in the US.
In his speech McCreevy also indicated that the establishment of a roundtable
to co-ordinate the consistent application of IFRS was likely. However, he
promised that the roundtable ‘will not be making any interpretations. That is
the task of IFRIC. And neither would the roundtable be used as a platform to
review decisions taken by enforcers’.