The following draft guidelines were made final and become effective for financial statements covering periods beginning on or after 1 January 2003.

• RJ 140, Changes in Accounting Policies, RJ 145, Change of Estimates, and RJ 150, Fundamental Errors are all based on IAS 8, Net Profit or Loss for the Period, Fundamental Errors and Changes in Accounting Policy. The guidelines allow in more instances the effect of these instances to be reported by adjusting retained earnings. RJ 150 prescribes that fundamental errors can only be reported by adjusting retained earnings where IAS 8 allows alternative treatment of the correction of a fundamental error to be included in the determination of net profit or loss for the current period.
• RJ 160, Events after the Balance Sheet Date, is revised based on IAS 10, Events After the Balance Sheet Date, taking into account Dutch company legislation.
• RJ 213, Investment Property, is now almost completely based on IAS 40, Improvement Property.
• RJ 270, Profit and Loss Account, was amended to bring about further convergence with IAS 23, Borrowing Costs.
• RJ 330, Related Parties, is now fully in line with IAS 24, Related Party Disclosures.

Draft guidelines were added mainly based on further incorporating IAS 1, Presentation of Financial Statements and IAS 11, Construction Contracts and IAS 19, Employee Benefits. Furthermore, amendments were made to (draft) guidelines incorporating SIC 17, Equity - Cost of an Equity Transaction, SIC 27, Evaluating the Substance of Transactions in the Legal Form of a Lease, SIC 29, Disclosure - Service Concession Agreements, SIC 30 Reporting Currency - Translation from Measurement Currency to Presentation Currency, SIC 31 Revenue - Barter Transactions Involving Advertising Services, SIC 32 Intangible Assets - Web Site Costs and SIC 33 Consolidation and Equity Method - Potential Voting Rights and Allocation of Ownership Interests.

The draft guideline on Financial Instruments has not yet been made final. The Council has decided to wait for the changes proposed by the IASB in the Exposure Draft of Proposed Amendments to IAS 32, Financial Instruments: Disclosure and Presentation, and IAS 39, Financial Instruments: Recognition and Measurement. As soon as these will be incorporated into a final Standard, the Council will incorporate these into a final guideline.

Due to the large number of comments the Council has received on its draft guideline on Post-Employment Benefits it has decided to issue a discussion memorandum on the subject. The discussion memorandum proposes a further convergence with IAS 19, Employee Benefits. A final guideline is not expected to come into effect before the year 2005.