Who we are
The European Federation of Financial Executives Institutes (EFFEI) is the pre-eminent professional organisation representing more than 12,500 senior financial executives from over 6,500 companies across Europe. These executives are typically chief financial officers, finance directors or treasurers in Europe's leading companies, as well as in small and medium-sized companies.
Our regional chapters and national institutes help our members to build relationships with leading members of their profession. Our information tools help our members to understand and anticipate key issues, trends and regulatory developments in a rapidly changing business environment, and our working groups provide our members with opportunities to share know-how and experience, as well as providing access to European regulators and the ability to influence EU policymaking.
Promoting best practice
The role of the senior financial executive has changed dramatically in the last 25 years, as companies have adapted their business practices to adapt to rapid technological and organisational change. No longer seen as the ‘super number cruncher’, the financial executive is now playing a far more strategic role in companies, requiring highly developed management, information technology and communication skills. We help our members to develop the skills necessary to meet the challenges of the future, and to promote best practice in their organisations, through a variety of programmes, information tools and fora where professionals share know-how and exchange ideas.
Promoting relationships
We recognise the importance of personal relationships in building a successful and fulfilling career. Our local chapters provide our members with access to an elite group of financial professionals in their area, and a private forum in which executives can share knowledge and talk over commonly encountered obstacles and opportunities.
Information tools
Members of EFFEI have access to a whole range of services designed to help them meet the challenges they face more effectively. These services include publications, such as newsletters, magazines and reports, and a variety of conferences, seminars and training programmes.
Influence
EFFEI plays an active role in the development of EU policy and legislation and we are regularly consulted by EU officials when they are drafting regulation. Through membership of European Commission consultative bodies, such as the Accounting Advisory Forum, and through direct contacts with senior officials, we seek to ensure that the interests of financial executives and their companies are taken into account by regulators.
Origins
The federation was set up in 1989 to develop and maintain close relations with the institutions of the European Union (EU) in Brussels.
Objectives
The mission of EFFEI is specifically to improve the integration of financial executives in Europe.
Key objectives are to:
* build and improve mutual understanding between financial executives in Europe through the exchange of financial information, experience and ideas, enabling them to compare philosophies, policies and practices with their counterparts indifferent countries.
* contribute to the process of European integration by ensuring that the views and experience of financial executives, who have first-hand knowledge of management problems in their countries, are represented to the European Union institutions.
Implementation
EFFEI aims to achieve its objectives by:
* informing the member institutes and members about relevant EU developments and issues, through a variety of publications.
* liaising, cooperating and communicating with the EU institutions.
* setting up pan-European teams of experts nominated by the national institutes to discuss matters of interest to the profession.
* organising conferences and seminars for financial executives.
EFFEI pursues its objectives through meetings of a number of working groups and meetings with officials in the EU institutions, as appropriate.
EFFEI has set up working groups of experts from the member institutes to address, in particular, the following areas which are of professional interest to its members:
* accounting standards and financial reporting
* the introduction of the single currency
* direct taxation
* present and future VAT system
* merger & acquisition control in the EU
* pension funds
* environmental reporting issues
* regulation of auditing
Our Affiliations
IASB. A number of EFFEI’s members has played an active role in the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). The IASB (formerly the International Accounting Standards Committee - IASC) is an independent private-sector body whose objectives are: to formulate and publish in the public interest accounting standards to be observed in the presentation of financial statements and to promote their worldwide acceptance and observance; and to work generally for the improvement and harmonisation of regulations, accounting standards and procedures relating to the presentation of financial statements. The IASB represents 143 professional accountancy organisations in 104 countries, as well as the Information Systems Audit and Control Association and a number organisations representing business. The IASB has issued more than 38 standards to date.
Accountancy Advisory Forum. EFFEI has been an active member of the European Commission’s Accountancy Advisory Forum, the main forum for discussion between financial professionals and the EU institutions, since June 1998. Current topics on which the Forum is being consulted by the Commission include the proposal, put forward in the Commission’s Action Plan for Financial Services, to give more weight to International Accounting Standards (IAS) in a European context. The use of IAS would help achieve the Commission’s goal of comparability in financial reports in the EU.
PIECT. A number of EFFEI members have also been actively involved with the work of the Panel of Independent Experts on Company Taxation (PIECT). This was set up by the EU in 1999, in order to identify remaining tax obstacles to cross-border economic activity in the European single market. The two PIECT panels have made valuable contributions to the debate on how to develop targeted remedies within the single market. They have also played a significant role in establishing a comprehensive approach to EU company taxation.