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06 March 2007

Speech McCreevy: State of play in international accounting





Speaking at the SEC Roundtable in Washington, Commissioner McCreevy lined out the progress so far achieved on the changeover to IFRS in Europe. “I am very pleased to be able to say today that the move towards IFRS has been going well”, he said noting that the introduction of 40 new standards plus interpretations has given rise to some application and interpretative issues.

“I am convinced accepting IFRS without reconciliation in the US capital markets will have very positive effects”, the Commissioner said. But he also noted that with regard to the convergence process of IFRS and US GAAP that “we need a period of accounting stability and predictability – not the palace revolution every day.” However, the principle of equivalence can also be applied in the field of EU-US cooperation on audit regulation, he noted.

“The starting point for cooperation between oversight bodies should be the home country principle. This is why we have agreed today to launch roadmap discussions on equivalence of our respective auditing systems.”

“The aim is to have, by 2009, inspections of audit firms carried out by their home country public oversight body - and not by host country inspections, which are legally and organisationally cumbersome.”

Full speech


© European Commission


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