On 7 May 2026, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a report on the corporate reporting enforcement and regulatory activities of financial reporting enforcers within the European Economic Area in 2025.
ESMA is an independent EU authority established on 1 January 2011. Its mission is to enhance investor protection and promote stable and well-functioning financial markets in the European Union (EU).
ESMA and the EU’s financial reporting enforcers regularly assess the compliance of financial and non-financial information provided by issuers listed on regulated markets with the applicable financial reporting framework (IFRS accounting standards).
The report on corporate reporting enforcement and regulatory activities provides an overview of the activities related to the supervision and enforcement of corporate reporting carried out from 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2025 by the national enforcers in the European Economic Area, and by ESMA. The report is 70 pages long and is structured into three areas of enforcement activities: financial reporting, sustainability reporting, and digital reporting (ESEF).
At the end of 2025, approximately 3,800 issuers (in 2024: 3900) preparing IFRS financial statements were admitted to trading on a regulated market in the EU, of which around 3,150 prepared IFRS consolidated financial statements and around 650 prepared only IFRS non-consolidated financial statements. In the Czech Republic, there were 74 (in 2024: 78) issuers in 2025, of which 26 prepared IFRS consolidated financial statements and 48 prepared IFRS non-consolidated financial statements.
In 2025, the European enforcers examined the financial statements of approximately 628 issuers, which corresponds to an average examination rate of 16% of all IFRS issuers with securities listed on regulated markets.
These examinations resulted in 240 actions to address material departures from IFRS. Approximately 36% of all actions taken in 2025 related to issues regarding recognition, measurement and/or presentation, while 64% of all actions related only to disclosure issues. Similar to 2024, in around 11% of the actions taken, the enforcers required issuers to make immediate disclosure to the market by reissuing the financial statements or publishing a corrective note. For the remaining 89% of the actions taken, enforcers considered that a correction in the future financial statements was sufficient.
Similar to 2024, the main deficiencies were identified in four areas, namely financial instruments, impairment testing of non-financial assets, presentation of financial statements and operating segments.
Enforcers also assessed the non-financial information (Alternative Performance Measures) for 434 issuers, covering approximately 11% of the total estimated number of issuers required to publish a non-financial statement, resulting in 69 enforcement actions. Almost half of these enforcement actions were about disclosures under Article 8 of the EU Taxonomy Regulation.
At the end of 2025, approximately 2,000 issuers’ sustainability statements fell within the scope of enforcement. In the Czech Republic, only 11 issuers published consolidated sustainability statements in 2025.
The report also covers reporting in the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF). In 2025, 3,072 issuers prepared IFRS consolidated financial statements with a mandatory iXBRL markup (27 of them in the Czech Republic), 50 issuers prepared unconsolidated financial statements with a voluntary iXBRL markup, and 815 issuers prepared financial statements in XHTML format only (51 of them in the Czech Republic). Based on the 2,995 filing examinations, enforcers took 266 actions in 2025. The breaches in this area mostly concerned the entire annual financial report not being in XHTML or the late publication of the ESEF annual financial report.
The ESMA Report on 2025 Corporate reporting enforcement and regulatory activities is available on the ESMA website.
In our view, the ESMA report indirectly highlights that preparing financial statements by issuers listed on regulated markets can be a complex task. At Deloitte, our team of experienced specialists is here to help you simplify the process efficiently and effectively. If you are interested in advisory services related to the accounting and financial reporting, please contact Petra Dvořáková.
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