Communication: Annual accounts of the European Commission 2014

The consolidated financial statements of the EU comprise all significant controlled entities (i.e. the EU institutions and agencies), associates and joint ventures. The objective of the financial statements is to provide information about the financial position, performance and cashflows of an entity that is useful to a wide range of users. For the EU as a public sector entity, the objectives are more specifically to provide information useful for decision making, and to demonstrate the accountability of the entity for the resources entrusted to it. It is with these goals in mind that the present document has been drawn up.

The overall considerations (or accounting principles) to be followed when preparing the financial statements are laid down in EU accounting rule 2 and are the same as those described in IPSAS 1, that is: fair presentation, accrual basis, going concern, consistency of presentation, aggregation, offsetting and comparative information. The qualitative characteristics of financial reporting according to article 144 of the Financial Regulation are relevance, reliability, understandability and comparability.

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