Mandatory environmental disclosures by companies complying with IASs/IFRSs. The cases of France, Germany and UK

This study investigates whether the adoption of a single set of accounting standards, such as IAS/IFRS, guarantees the harmonization of accounting practices within a country and across countries, or whether differences in reporting practices persist because of dissimilarities in reporting habits and institutional settings. To this end, we investigate whether the level of environmental disclosure under IFRS is related to the size of the reporting firm, and the strength of legal and regulatory constraints on environmental disclosures in the country where the firm is domiciled. Results indicate (1) that environmental disclosures imposed by IFRS increase with firm size and (2) that firms domiciled in countries with constraining environmental disclosure regulations (i.e. France and the UK) report more on environmental issues than firms domiciled in countries with weakly constraining regulations (i.e. Germany). This suggests a strong impact of national regulations on IFRS reporting. Taken as a whole, our results support the view that IFRS are not applied consistently across firms and across countries, notably because of persistence of reporting traditions and discrepancies in national legal requirements.