EU urges soft accounting norms

Agence France-Presse

Under pressure from the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board voted on Thursday to modify the "mark-to-market" accounting standard, which has been blamed by some for worsening the global financial crisis.

The changes will allow banks to hold some toxic assets to give them more time to recover in conditions where markets are frozen, rather than regularly marking their prices down to currently depressed prices.

"These changes could result in a significant divergence of international accounting practice for financial instruments," EU finance ministers lamented in a joint statement after a meeting in Prague.

They called on the standard-bearer for Europe, the London-based International Accounting Standards Board, to work with its U.S. counterpart "with the aim of achieving equivalent treatment" for European banks. The ministers said that bringing global accounting standards in force in Europe in line with the U.S. rules aimed to "avoid risks of competitive distortions."