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ESMA updates the European Single Electronic Format Reporting Manual

On 24 August 2022, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published an update to its Reporting Manual on the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF). A notable development is a new guidance concerning the ESEF regulatory technical standards (RTS) requirement to markup the notes to the IFRS consolidated financial statement following the block tagging approach.



The reporting manual was developed as part of ESMA's efforts to help issuers and software vendors create ESEF documents that comply with the RTS for ESEF. The guide explains how to solve issues commonly encountered while creating ESEF documentation.
 
In the updated version of the manual, ESMA provides new guidance regarding the ESEF regulatory technical standards (RTS) requirement to mark up notes to IFRS consolidated financial statements following the block tagging approach. The new section also details guidance regarding the usage of taxonomy elements and granularity expectations for the tagging.
 
Also added is a section on ESMA's expectations for when issuers publish their annual financial reports in formats other than the ESEF and additional guidance when issuers publish in multiple languages.
 
Furthermore, the report discusses new technical recommendations, including the construction of a block tag and ESMA's expectation to also tag dashes or empty fields in figures, even if they are not numbers.
 
Issuers preparing their 2022 annual financial reports and software firms developing software for preparing XBRL-based annual financial reports must adhere to the guidelines provided in the ESEF reporting manual.


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