Transposition of the accounting directive

Abstract

The Fourth and Seventh Accounting Directives failed to reach the desired comparability of financial statements in the EU, as member states had been provided with too many member state options (MSOs) to transpose in their national laws (Burggraaff, 1981). The adoption of these MSOs varies across the member states and this, together with the fact that all options under the Fourth and Seventh Accounting Directives had been used by at least one member state (EC, 2009), makes comparisons of financial statements in different member states difficult. Among other objectives, Directive 2013/34/EU (hereafter, 'Accounting Directive') sought to address this issue but later stage political negotiations at European Council and European Parliament level resulted in 'new MSOs being introduced or existing MSOs being maintained' (EFAA, 2014, p. 6) leading to over one hundred options (EFAA, 2014).