Formal Participation in the EFRAG’s Consultation Processes: The Role of European National Standard-Setters

Abstract

While the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) considers European national standard-setters (NSSs) as close partners that play a vital role in its legitimacy, empirical evidence on EFRAG’s consultation processes and the involvement of NSSs therein remains scarce. We use a multi-issue/multi-period approach to investigate the formal participation in EFRAG’s consultation processes. By examining 2,102 comment letters submitted to EFRAG in the 2002–2015 period, we find that NSSs typically outweigh other stakeholder groups in terms of level of participation across stages of the consultation process and project topics. Although NSSs’ level of participation is rather stable over time, it significantly varies across European countries. We also provide a recent classification of European NSSs and show that NSSs’ level of participation varies by their institutional status and is the highest for private NSSs. Our findings have implications for aspects of the legitimacy of both EFRAG and NSSs and shed light on the role of intermediaries in international accounting standard-setting.