European Public Sector Accounting Standards (EPSAS) – Opportunities and Challenges in European Public Sector Accounting. Insights from Literature

The present paper aims at identifying the current state in the development of the European Public Sector Accounting Standards (EPSAS) framework, in the context of the prior existence and the widely recognized global accounting standards for governments and public sector organizations, namely the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS). Intrinsically, the paper’s topic proves to be of relevance in the current landscape characterized by a generalized decline in public trust in public entities, hindered by the recent social and economic developments, inflation and the past pandemic, on the background of which an increasing number of governments face structurally unbalanced public finances, elevated and growing debt burdens, raising questions regarding the efficiency of public administration, inconsistencies and long-term stability. Ultimately, the resulting findings suggest a great opportunity for the successful materialization of the outcomes sought after by EPSAS, provided that the initiative is robust, qualitative and tuned to the field realities.