Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/815 of 17 December 2018 supplementing Directive 2004/109/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council with regard to regulatory technical standards on the specification of a single electronic reporting format (Text with EEA relevance)

This Regulation specifies the single electronic reporting format, as referred to in Article 4(7) of Directive 2004/109/EC, to be used for the preparation of annual financial reports by issuers.

For the purposes of this Regulation, the following definitions shall apply: (1) ‘core taxonomy’ means the combined set of the taxonomy elements set out in Annex VI and the following collection of links: (a) presentation linkbase, which groups the taxonomy elements; (b) calculation linkbase, which expresses arithmetic relationships between taxonomy elements; (c) label linkbase, which describes the meaning of each taxonomy element; (d) definition linkbase, which reflects dimensional relationships of the core taxonomy elements; (2) ‘extension taxonomy’ means the combined set of taxonomy elements and the following collection of links, both created by the issuer: (a) presentation linkbase, which groups the taxonomy elements; (b) calculation linkbase, which expresses arithmetic relationships between taxonomy elements; (c) label linkbase, which describes the meaning of each taxonomy element; (d) definition linkbase, which ensures dimensional validity of the resulting XBRL instance document against the extension taxonomy; (3) ‘IFRS consolidated financial statements’ means consolidated financial statements prepared in accordance with either IFRS adopted pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1606/2002 or with IFRS as referred to in point (a) of the first subparagraph of Article 1 of Decision 2008/961/EC.

Issuers shall prepare their entire annual financial reports in XHTML format.

1 Where annual financial reports include IFRS consolidated financial statements, issuers shall mark up those consolidated financial statements.

2 Issuers shall, as a minimum, mark up the disclosures specified in Annex II where those disclosures are present in those IFRS consolidated financial statements.

3 Issuers may mark up disclosures presented in IFRS consolidated financial statements other than those set out in paragraph 2.

4 For markups set out in paragraphs 1, 2 and 3, issuers shall use the XBRL markup language and shall use a taxonomy in which the elements shall be those set out in the core taxonomy. Where, in accordance with point 4 of Annex IV, it is not appropriate to use elements in the core taxonomy, issuers shall create extension taxonomy elements as provided for in Annex IV.

1 Issuers incorporated in Member States may mark up all parts of their annual financial reports other than those set out in Article 4 if they use the XBRL markup language and a taxonomy specific to those parts and that taxonomy is provided by the Member State in which they are incorporated.

2 Issuers incorporated in third countries shall not mark up any parts of their annual financial reports other than IFRS consolidated financial statements.

For markups made in accordance with Articles 4 and 5, issuers shall comply with the following: (a) embedding of markups in the issuers’ annual financial reports in XHTML format using the Inline XBRL specifications set out in Annex III; (b) requirements on marking up and filing rules set out in Annex IV.

ESMA may publish machine-readable and downloadable XBRL taxonomy files based on the core taxonomy. Those files shall comply with the criteria set out in Annex V.

This Regulation shall enter into force on the twentieth day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union. It shall apply to annual financial reports containing financial statements for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2020.