RSS feedsA clash may be looming between the new man hired to oversee the work of the international accounting standard setter and European regulators.
Gerrit Zalm the new chairman of the trustees of the International Accounting Standards Board and a former deputy prime minister and finance minister of the Netherlands admitted this week that ‘Europe may need more attention [from the IASB]’, but also warned the continent that he intends to remove the European version of IFRS that has been approved and is in use by European companies.
‘One of my first priorities will be no new carve-outs in Europe and trying to get rid of the existing carve-out, because if Europe is doing this, other countries could get the same inspiration and then all the advantages of the one programme fade away,’ he said.
His comments may shock those European companies that recently petitioned the US Securities and Exchange Commission to accept filings using IFRS amended by the EU parliament. Zalm hinted at the political nature of his appointment this week. ‘I expect that there will be political complications in adopting these standards, then my political background can be of use,’ he warned.
His remarks follow months of tension between the IASB and the European Parliament, as parliamentarians accused the IASB of being too closely aligned with the US.
The chairwoman of the European parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee Pervenche Berès has clashed with the organisation over adoption of the segmental reporting standard IFRS 8, part of the international convergence plan that the IASB adopted nearly verbatim from US standards.
Berès said at the time that ‘the IASB should pay more attention to the concerns of jurisdictions that require companies to apply IFRS. Moreover, many jurisdictions across the world are moving towards IFRS and the IASB should also pay more attention to those jurisdictions’.
Zalm was not available to comment this week.
