Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/8152 specifies the single electronic reporting format, as referred to in Article 4(7) of Directive 2004/109/EC, to be used for the preparation of annual financial reports by issuers. Consolidated financial statements included therein are prepared either in accordance with International Accounting Standards, which are commonly referred to as International Financial Reporting Standards (‘IFRSs’), adopted pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1606/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council3, or in accordance with IFRSs as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) which, based on Commission Decision 2008/961/EC4, are considered as equivalent to IFRSs adopted pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1606/2002.

The core taxonomy to be used for the single electronic reporting format is based on the IFRS Taxonomy and is an extension of it. The IFRS Foundation annually updates the IFRS Taxonomy to reflect, amongst other developments, the issuance of new IFRSs or the amendment of existing IFRSs, the analysis of disclosures commonly reported in practice, or improvements to general content or technology of the IFRS Taxonomy. Therefore, it is necessary to update the regulatory technical standards to reflect each annual update of the IFRS Taxonomy.

In March 2020 the IFRS Foundation published the updated version of the IFRS Taxonomy. That update should therefore be reflected in Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/815.

In order to allow enough time for the effective implementation of the requirements by issuers, and to minimise compliance costs, this Regulation should apply to annual financial reports containing financial statements for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2021. However, issuers should be allowed to adopt the taxonomy specified in this Regulation already for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2020.

The copyright, the database rights and any other intellectual property rights in the IFRS Taxonomy are owned by the IFRS Foundation. A copyright notice should therefore be included in Annex I to Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/815.

Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/815 should therefore be amended accordingly.

This Regulation is based on the draft regulatory technical standard submitted to the Commission by the European Securities and Markets Authority.

This Regulation is a technical update to Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/815 to reflect updates in the IFRS taxonomy and as such does not constitute new policy or a substantial change to existing policy. ESMA has not conducted open public consultations on the draft regulatory technical standards on which this Regulation is based, analysed the potential related costs and benefits or requested the advice of the Securities and Markets Stakeholder Group established under Article 37 of Regulation (EU) No 1095/2010 of the European Parliament and of the Council5 because doing so would have been highly disproportionate to the scope and impact of this amendment,