1. The EPSAS Governance Framework
Task Force "EPSAS Governance" 2 October 2013 – Ampere, BECH building
Directorate D: Government Finance Statistics (GFS)
Unit D.4: GFS Quality Management and Government Accounting

2. Proposed EPSAS governance model, Sept.2013
=>analogous to the model for EU statistics
=>The development of EPSAS calls for the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders, such as national standard setters, IPSASB, preparers, statisticians, courts of audit, public and private experts, and academics.
=>binding legal acts, will in practice ensure direct participation of national standard-setters and government accounting authorities throughout the endorsement process.

3. Proposed EPSAS governance structure

4. EPSAS Regulatory Committee*
- a governing body;
- oversees the development of EPSAS;
- provides opinions on the specific EPSAS to be endorsed by the EC, following established EU legislative procedures;
- chaired and represented by Eurostat;
- comprised of high-level representatives of the Member States.
* in this context the term "regulatory" is meant to serve presentational purposes in analogy to the European Statistical System Committee (ESSC)

5. EPSAS Governance Advisory Group
Entrusted with specific EPSAS oversight tasks;
Provides an independent overview of EPSAS and its standard setting procedure and implementation of the key principles;
Enhances the professional independence, integrity and accountability of EPSAS, key principles and quality of EPSAS;
Provides advice to the EC on appropriate measures to facilitate the implementation of the key principles, on how to communicate the principles to users and providers.

6. EPSAS Advisory Group
Represents a wide and representative range of stakeholders, such as national standard setters, IPSASB, the accountancy and the audit professions, preparers, statisticians and academia.
Nominates delegates to the EPSAS working groups;
Ensures that user requirements as well as the response burden on information providers and producers are taken into account in developing EPSAS;

7. EPSAS Working Group
Comprises technical experts from public sector standards setters and government accounting authorities, in order to support technical development and drafting work;
Two working groups:
EPSAS Standards
EPSAS Interpretation

8. Alternative models
Two possible alternative governance models were suggested during the conference:
- The governance system overseen by DG MARKT on IFRS for business accounting
- The approach used for ESMA – the European Securities and Markets Authority