On 25 September 2015, ESMA published a consultation paper on draft Regulatory Technical Standards ("RTS") on the European Single Electronic Format, as required by the Transparency Directive.
ESMA considered that some sections of the Annual Financial Reports ("AFR") are not suitable because, in order to have effect and admissibility in court, the document should be in human-readable form. ESMA proposes that the AFR should consist of a dual data format including structured (machine-readable data with embedded coding) and non-structured (human-readable) electronic formats.
ESMA highlights that the adoption of a standardised taxonomy to classify financial information would be very hard to achieve due to the differences in accounting standards across the EU and the problems it creates for narrative reporting.
The consultation will be open until 24 December 2015 and ESMA must submit the draft RTS to the European Commission by 31 December 2016.
The full text paper is available here:
https://www.esma.europa.eu/content/ESMA-Consultation-Paper-ESEF
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