The long road of the European Union towards a converged accounting system from the Treaty of Rome to the Single accounting directive

Since the end of World War II, after the Marshall Plan, after the Treaty of Rome, accounting has been living at the time of standardization; as a late consequence, the European Union (formerly European Economic Community with 6 countries, now Union with 28 countries) was submitted to several accounting guidelines such as the 3rd and the 4th 1978 directives, the 6th 1982 directive or the 8th 1984 directive. This European standardization coexists with the international standardization coming from the United Nations Organization, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Accounting Standards Board, the European Federation of Accountants, the IFAC and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), as well as foreign standardizations with strong negotiating power, especially Anglo-Saxon, such as the American FASB – entirely exotic, or the ambiguous British ASC – at the same time exotic and integrated to the European Union. All of these standardization systems continuously evolve and it is impossible to maintain a single one without any modification or with absolute stability for more than a few years. Thus, the three evolutions of the conceptual framework of the IASC – changed to IASB – have rendered the evolution of the main European accounting directives almost inevitable and a single directive has been developed and was published on June 26, 2013. Its key characteristics are presented below.