Directive 2013/34/EU, Article 6 An Analysis and some Implications. A Research Note

This research note analyses a number of implications of Article 6 of the new EU accounting Directive. Two avenues are explored in some detail. The first is the meaning, or non-meaning, of the measurement basis provisions of the Directive, covered in Article 6 with derogations in Articles 7 and 8, in the context of the previously declared intention to no longer allow the use of current replacement cost. The second relates to the extraordinary flexibility, indeed confusion, relating to the substance/form distinction, both in principle from Article 6, and by example relating to consolidation in Article 22. The Directive is argued to be sufficiently incompetent, ambivalent, and at times internally inconsistent, to allow a considerable degree of de facto carte blanche to Member States. Perhaps it should be called the anti-harmonisation directive.