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EPSAS are being considered in the EU context where a need for harmonisation in Governmental Accounting (GA) has been recognised as important to increase the reliability of sources of information to the National Accounts (NA) figures.However, GA and NA are two different and parallel reporting systems at national level, even if, within the European context, EPSAS intend to contribute for their convergence.The relationship between GA and NA has been recurrently addressed in the literature over the last two decades, with professionals being more proactive while academics have been more reactive in the debate. Several issues have been raised. This paper recaptures and revises these issues, synthesising academic and practitioner literature, archival documents and reports of EU working groups, from 1996 to 2018.The analysis highlights the more controversial areas, and those that seemed already settled but yet are now, within the context of EPSAS development, being raised again. Specifically, the paper calls attention to (1) the need to manage between two different conceptual frameworks of GA and NA; (2) the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration between the professionals involved, namely accountants, public administrators and statisticians; (3) the role of budgetary accounting and the alignment required between reporting in GA and NA, reducing and harmonising adjustments to be made when translating data from one into the other; and (4) the need to address auditing issues, as EPSAS on their own may not be enough to ensure reliability of the information reported.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to look at the European public sector accounting standards (EPSAS) project development path to explore how governance and legitimacy issues intertwine when a new standard-setting system is developed. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative interpretative multimethod approach is adopted, which encompasses document analysis and participative observations. Findings The analysis shows the role of governance dimensions, including institutional participation and consensus, in the process for securing the legitimacy of accounting standards and the related setting processes, pointing to the critical issues emerging throughout the development of the EPSAS project. Originality/value The definition of public sector accounting standards poses significant challenges to the accounting profession and regulators alike. A paradigmatic case of such challenges is represented by the decisions to develop harmonised EPSAS. A key contribution of this paper is to connect legitimacy dimensions with network governance, offering a view of the input, output and procedural dimensions associated with decisions to legitimise EPSAS and how these may be affected by network governance.

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This article sheds more light on the possible advantages (and the critical aspects) of introducing accruals accounting for governments in the context of European macroeconomic surveillance. This would add more balance to the discussion about accrual accounting, which tends to focus on the resource costs involved. The research it describes would, inter alia, show the impact on sensitive policy areas using a statistical analysis from EU countries' official Government Finance Statistics. It also draws some conclusions on a suggested roadmap for public accounting in the European context.