Financial Reporting by Listed Entities - European Single Electronic Format

July 2019

As from 1 January 2020, issuers having securities admitted to trading on EU regulated markets (“Issuers”) will be required to prepare their annual financial statements in the European Single Electronic Format (“ESEF”). This requirement stems from the Transparency Directive, as amended in 2013, which tasked the European Securities and Markets Authority (“ESMA”) with the responsibility of developing regulatory technical standards (“RTS”) to specify the ESEF. The objective of ESEF is to facilitate reporting for Issuers, whilst simultaneously supporting the accessibility, transparency, and comparability of annual financial reports for investors and regulators.

The ESEF requires that all annual financial statements are prepared in the eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHMTL) and that IFRS consolidated financial statements included in the XHTML document are marked up with eXtebsible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) tags.

As from 1 January 2020 it shall be mandatory for Issuers preparing consolidated financial statements to tag their primary financial statements using IFRS Taxonomy, whilst the requirement to block tag the notes for the entire set of consolidated financial statements will be mandatory as from 1 January 2022.

The Securities and Markets Supervision Unit of the Malta Financial Services Authority has published a number of circulars and FAQs on the implementation of ESEF and is presently conducting individual supervisory meetings with Issuers in order to discuss the timely implementation of the ESEF.

For more information refer to: https://www.mfsa.com.mt/firms/capital-markets/european-single-electronic-format/circulars/

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