Congress is told that EU wants SEC recognition of IFRSs

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20 May 2004

In Testimony (PDF 115k) before the US House Committee on Financial Services, Alexander Schaub, the Director General of the Internal Market Directorate of the European Commission, expressed a hope that the US SEC would recognise IFRSs as part of a programme of mutual US-EU recognition of each other's financial market regulations.

The committee was conducting hearings on "The US-EU Regulatory Dialogue and Its Future". Mr. Schaub said:

It is also extremely important that we cooperate effectively on the introduction of International Accounting Standards in the EU from next year. The more that there can be convergence in both directions between IAS and US GAAP, the better for all. We are therefore encouraged by the cooperation between the FASB and IASB. Nevertheless, we believe that such convergence can only go so far: ultimately the EU and US will have to cooperate on recognising the equivalence of each set of rules. This is an issue on which more progress is needed over the coming six months, but we are cautiously encouraged by some of the recent moves of the SEC. We hope that the SEC will draw up a road map towards recognition of IAS. The EU will be fully transparent about the equivalence recognition process in our Prospectus and Transparency Directives.

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