Netherlands
The most important XBRL-project in the Netherlands is the Netherlands Taxonomy Project (NTP) lead by the Dutch Government with the support of many organizations, including XBRL Netherlands. The main objective is to reduce the administrative expenses of companies by implementing the electronic filing of financial, tax and statistical statements for all companies.
The Netherlands taxonomy (NT), developed and maintained by the Dutch Government, contains the XBRL data-elements to support the electronic filing. Version 2.1 is available at this moment. The government also developed, with the support of the business community, an infrastructure for the exchange of electronic filings based on Open Standards. XBRL Netherlands and several members like Royal NIVRA and audit firms are involved in organizing conferences, meetings and training session, to provide the information needed for implementation and adoption of XBRL. More information about this project and the NT can be found in the report”Functionality and possibilities of the Dutch taxonomy”, including “Reducing administrative burdens through standardization”. www.xbrl-ntp.nl.
The NTP is an example of the SBR approach (Standard Business Reporting) and includes at this moment also projects by governmental bodies focusing on standardizing of the information supply chain of organizations involved in healthcare, agriculture and education. The SBR project also initiated the standardizing and simplification of the information exchange between businesses and government and all kind of regulatory reporting. The Dutch Government is supporting the SBR projects initiated by the Governments of Australia and New Zealand
Two major Dutch banks – ABN AMRO and Rabobank – publicly stated at the last XBRL conference in May 2008 in Eindhoven, they are going to collect financial information for credit risk rating in XBRL format and deal with this kind of information online real-time. This approach fit into the development of more competition between banks in granting of credit to SMEs’. They also developed an extension on the NT to be used for these credit risk filings (based on Basel II). The Dutch Central Bank is able to receive XBRL-filings (CEBS-project).
