I was speaking to the EC on IFRS 8 today. They made a number of comments in the light of the letter they had sent to me.

The first is that I cannot use IASB derived arguments in relation to IFRS in the EU. EU IFRS, they said, is not the same as IFRS. The IASB may consider that there is a duty to stakeholders in preparing financial statements. The EU does not. The phrase "IFRSs as adopted by the European Union" is, I was told, something quite different from IFRS.

My immediate response was that in that case it was a matter of no concern that IFRS 8 not be adopted; we already had non convergent IFRS in that case. Oh no, I was told. That was not true and could not be argued. The EU wanted convergent accounting standards. But the obligations arising from their use is different in the EU. The EU was only concerned with market regulation, that was the only reason they had adopted IFRS. So stakeholder concerns were not an issue of concern within EU reporting and could be ignored.

Not may people know that.

I suspect many would like to do so.

So I thought I'd put it on the record.