L’evoluzione della disciplina comunitaria del bilancio ordinario d’esercizio. Prime riflessioni sulla Direttiva 34/2013

The Directive 2013/34/EU of the European Parliament deals with the annual financial statements, consolidated financial statements and related reports of certain types of undertakings, amending Directive 2006/43/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and repealing Council Directives 78/660/EEC and 83/349/EEC. These Directives, for three decades, regulated the financial statements’ preparation and presentation processes in Europe. The main objectives of the new Directive are related to the reduction of administrative burden, the simplification of disclosure processes and a higher clarity and comparability of financial statements. The basic principle enforced by the Directive is "think small first". On the one hand, this paper aims to investigate the main changes introduced by the Directive on the annual financial statement, focusing on: (a) the criteria applied in order to define the categories of undertakings; (b) the general financial reporting principles and the presentation of the Profit and Loss Account and (c) the provisions concerning the Notes to the Financial Statements. On the other hand, we intend to analyze if the Directive’s requirements fulfil the purposes specified in the recitals. The results highlight that European accounting discipline has not been significantly modified and that the new requirements converge toward the International Financial Reporting Standard (i.e. in relation to materiality, substance over form and goodwill’s measurement). Most important changes related to these elements are presented and discussed, in order to highlight both the potential impacts of the Directive provisions (positive and negative ones) and, from our point of view, the opportunities missed by the regulator. The main contribution is to evaluate if the accounting framework, arising from the new Directive, is able to overcome the criticism of IV Directive advanced by some main Authors. Considering the relative paucity of studies on the new European accounting law, our effort turns out to be potentially useful to fill up this current literature gap