Les futures normes EPSAS : utilité de l'information à fournir à la lumière des meilleures pratiques internationales

Abstract

The global financial crisis has brought into light several weaknesses of the European public sector accounting. In order to address those weaknesses, the European Union has undertaken a large project aiming at creating the European Public Sector Accounting Standards (EPSAS), inspired by the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS). In this context, the purpose of the present work is to identify interesting practices with regard to the preparation and publication of the States consolidated financial statements (Whole of Government Accounts). It comes to take advantage of the experience acquired in this field by a few exemplary countries in order to provide some suggestions for the development of the European Public Sector Accounting Standards. With the aim of reaching the above-mentioned goal, a benchmark of the best international government practices has firstly been carried out. It has enabled the identification of five countries achieving remarkably high levels of transparency and efficiency with regard to their State consolidated financial statements. Then, a global analysis of those countries’ financial statements has been performed as well as an in-depth analysis of their practices with regard to tree specific accounting fields being particularly relevant in the public sector area. Nevertheless, a few questions were still remaining, especially regarding the understanding of the financial information provided in the Whole of Government Accounts. Thus, various interviews have been conducted among two distinct categories of interviewees in order to find an answer to the remaining questions. The methodology applied to the research has enabled the identification of interesting practices which may be sources of inspiration in the process of designing the European Public Sector Accounting Standards. Moreover, some fields of controversy to which the European Union will have to pay particular attention in order to achieve its targets have been emphasized. Finally, a country’s field of controversy may sometimes be addressed by another’s practices.