European States share monetary policy and are indirectly responsible for the overall debt of the Eurozone. Homogeneous and transparent financial statements are therefore required as well as the adoption of shared public finance policies. These facts ultimately led to the hypothesis of issuing common public accounting standards (EPSAS). Through the analysis of the Italian case, this paper discusses the idea of a common and detailed accounting regulation in a critical perspective. In particular, the objectives of the ventilated reform (coordination and control) are questioned as well as the costs that it would unavoidably produce, the possible inconsistency or redundancy of the identifiable solutions. Research and policy implications are relevant. The harmonization could in fact hide solutions as complex as useless, which is a risk that should be avoided. Con-versely, a clear relationship between the accounting instruments and expected results of the reforms must be recovered, also recovering the original purpose of National versus Governmental accounting.
