ThinkTWENTY20

After over four years and a mammoth effort translating the IFRS standards into all official EU languages, the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) became law on May 29.
The mandate is due to take effect for all IFRS based annual reports issued by public companies and PIEs for financial years that start on or after January 1, 2020 and heralds a huge step forward for transparency in Europe. 
ESEF will require all public companies across Europe to submit their Annual Financial Reports digitally as Inline XBRL documents and in accordance with the IFRS standards.
Markets and regulators around the world are shifting from paper to structured data, with ESEF passing into law marking a significant step forward for business transparency and financial analysis across Europe and no doubt accelerating this push in many other parts of the world. With business information in both human and digital machine-readable format, data will be far simpler to search, compare and analyse. ESEF also means Europe will be well placed to take advantage of rapid technological developments in AI and big data analysis – all innovations that could lead to a fundamental change in finance and business over the next decade.

(XBRL International - www.xbrl.org)