Michel Barnier calls for worldwide adoption of IFRSs

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12 Feb 2011

In a speech given at the European Commission conference on financial reporting and auditing, Michel Barnier, current European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services into whose remit accounting and auditing in Europe fall, gave first glimpses of the reactions to the Green paper entitled Audit Policy: Lessons from the Crisis adopted in October 2010.

However, he also spoke on the need of an increased application of IFRS worldwide and possible means of achieving that. The following is a translation of an extract from Mr Barnier's speech; the full speech in the French language can be downloaded here (PDF 41k).

We must make progress on convergence because the standards are less useful if they are not used by everyone. Therefore we need an ever increasing application of IFRSs, and this should definitely start with the United States.

We must also make the bodies of the IASB more representative, in order to include the major emerging economies but also to reflect the diversity of stakeholders affected by those standards. To this end, the Monitoring Board of the IASB of which I am a member has just started a consultation.

The consultation Mr Barnier refers to was launched with the publication of the Consultative Report on the Review of the IFRS Foundation's Governance on 7 February 2011.

Other material made available after the conference includes presentation slides from the panel on 9 February 2011. Please go to the European Commission website for an overview.

Click for our earlier story the Green Paper Audit Policy: Lessons from the Crisis

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