With an aim to move to digital financial reporting, the European Securities and Market Authority (ESMA) has announced that all public issuers in the Europe Union need to file their Annual Financial Reports (AFR) in a digital format named Inline XBRL (iXBRL) as per the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) directive. These filings will replace the PDF submissions to the national regulator altogether.

The ESMA mandate will apply for consolidated financial statements for financial year beginning on or after 1 January 2020. Companies following IFRS reporting standards have a tagging obligation and are required to map their AFR with the ESEF taxonomy released by ESMA. The rest of the issuers following country specific GAAP need to submit an XHTML file instead of a PDF file. ESMA ESEF iXBRL Mandate ESMA ESEF iXBRL Mandate