‘The Challenging Task of Developing European Public Sector Accounting Standards’

The European Commission has embarked on the project to develop harmonised public sector accounting standards, that will be applicable for all EU member states (EC, Eurostat, 2013). According to Eurostat, the EPSAS are a necessary tool for fiscal and budgetary integration in the EU, and are required for more rigorous, transparent and comparable reporting of financial information (ibid.). The ultimate objective is to have more reliable reporting by EU member states, regarding the debt and deficit levels as required by the Maastricht Treaty (EC, Eurostat, 2017). In order for the EPSAS to achieve the ambitious target of being viewed as building blocks that could bridge the gap between micro- and macro-reporting levels, the input of various disciplines is required. The papers in this Special Issue contribute to the debate by highlighting the challenges facing the process of the development of European standards, which may have policy relevant implications in order to obtain more transparent and comparable financial information across European countries.