XBRL as eXtensible reporting language for EU reporting

Abstract

The eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is a metadata representation language designed for a wide range of business reporting environments. Whilst primarily aimed at financial reporting, today XBRL is in use in not only for typical financial reporting domain, but also in various other business reporting scenarios. So for example, the Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS) in its Common Reporting (COREP) taxonomy uses XBRL for reporting of solvency information for financial institutions (Boixo, Flores 2005). Another example is the EUROSTAT initiative that is analyzing the use of XBRL for statistical purposes for gathering business related information. Nonethless, each of these scenarios do not cross the border of what traditionally could be regarded as business reporting that is closely related to financial information. One of the possible reasons for this can be related to the profile of the participants of the XBRL International consortium that is responsible for the development of the language. Traditionally, the significant majority of these participants come from the financial reporting and related domains (XBRL 2006a). That is why it is important to evaluate XBRL use as a more universal metadata language. Observing the recent developments concerning XBRL in the European Union (EU) it can be clearly stated that due to its extensibility the XBRL standard is very useful in the many scenarios where the international reporting needs to be implemented at international and national levels. Usually the regulations are interpreted in paper form and often employ proprietary reporting solutions are implemented to enable data gathering. The innovative approach of the CEBS, with the European COREP XBRL taxonomy being extended on the level of European member stated, demonstrates the potential for standardisation and harmonisation of business reporting. © Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden 2007.