Update 2021 of the core taxonomy adopted as ESEF Regulation

On 7 March 2022, the fourth version of the European Commission’s delegated Regulation (EU) 2022/352 of 29 November 2021 supplementing Directive 2004/109/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards regulatory technical standards for the specification of a single electronic reporting format (ESEF) was published in the Official Journal of the European Union.

This Regulation amends the previous version of Regulation (EU) 2020/1989 of 6 November 2020 (we reported). This update of the ESEF Regulation adopts the new version of ESMA’s core taxonomy to be used for ESEF. The core taxonomy is now based on the 2021 annual update of the IFRS Taxonomy published by the IFRS Foundation in March 2021.

The Taxonomy Update 2021 applies to financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2022. However, issuers are allowed to adopt the core taxonomy 2020 specified in this Regulation for financial years beginning before 1 January 2022.

The core taxonomy to be used for ESEF is developed by ESMA and builds on or is an extension of the IFRS Foundation taxonomy. 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, the regulatory technical standards are updated accordingly to reflect each annual update of the IFRS Taxonomy.