ESEF Highlights – Updated RTS for the ESEF 2024 taxonomy published by ESMA

ESMA's 2024 ESEF taxonomy update. ESMA decided not to conduct an open consultation because the update contains purely technical amendments.

ESMA has submitted this final report to the European Commission (EC), which will have three months to decide whether to approve the technical standards.

This amendment is mandatory for financial years starting on or after January 1, 2025, with early application allowed. Therefore, for annual financial reports including financial statements beginning on or after January 1, 2024, issuers are expected to use either the 2022 ESEF taxonomy or the 2024 ESEF taxonomy. We recommend that you coordinate with your auditors ahead of time to be well-prepared.

What are the updates in this version of the taxonomy?

This draft report incorporates updates from the IFRS Accounting Taxonomy from both 2023 and 2024 and provides additional guidance to preparers for tagging their financial statements.

The tagging of property, plant, and equipment, including right-of-use assets, has been updated to improve accuracy.

XBRL International has specified an improved standard for calculations to better handle duplicate values and rounded values. The new ESEF 2024 taxonomy will use this new Calculations 1.1 standard. This should reduce false positives in calculation messages and result in a cleaner validation report.

There have been clarifications in both labels and the type of elements in the Taxonomy to clarify their meanings.

How does this impact your tagged report?

We recommend that you pay extra attention to the posts in your financial statements relating to property, plant and equipment and right-of-use assets as you may need to re-apply tags depending on what the precise changes in the taxonomy are. This will become clearer once the final report is approved by the EC and the final taxonomy is available for use.

Link to the Final Report published by ESMA

Stay tuned for more updates

We will continue to monitor the developments and provide you with further updates and guidance as necessary.

Don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.