On 6 September 2023, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU's financial markets regulator and supervisor, published the annual update of its Reporting Manual on the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) aimed at promoting a harmonised approach for the preparation of annual financial reports in accordance with the regulatory technical standards (RTS) specified on ESEF. The main objective of the ESEF is to provide (a) technical improvements, (b) additional clarifications on how the elements included in the 2023 IFRS Taxonomy update can be used on a voluntary basis by using the extension mechanism and (c) further guidance on ESMA's expectation on the implementation of the block-tagging requirements and on the expected level of readability of the information extracted from a block tag.
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