The RTS on ESEF will apply to all issuers subject to the requirements contained in the Transparency Directive to make public AFRs.
The ESEF requires that:
In its first year, the mandate for iXBRL tagging of financial statements is limited to primary statements namely income statement, balance sheet, statement of cash flows and statement of changes in equity and shall be marked up in detail. So a company has to submit these four financial statements in iXBRL format on the year 2021.
From the following year, the scope of tagging expands including Notes to Accounts. Notes will need to be marked up by applying mark-ups for whole sections of the notes (block tagging).
The tagging of numbers within the Notes is voluntary.
The detailed provisions of the ESEF are contained in the RTS on ESEF included in the Final Report on the RTS on ESEF.
According to the Transparency Directive, each EU member state will offer an Officially Appointed Mechanism (OAM), responsible for the processing and dissemination of regulated data. Hence there could be potentially additional requirements imposed at each EU member state level.
To help companies in their preparation of ESEF, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has prepared an ESEF Reporting Manual and ESEF taxonomy files. More information is available here.
