diff --git a/spring-batch-infrastructure/src/main/java/org/springframework/batch/item/file/FlatFileItemReader.java b/spring-batch-infrastructure/src/main/java/org/springframework/batch/item/file/FlatFileItemReader.java
index c05f13336..025ef3056 100644
--- a/spring-batch-infrastructure/src/main/java/org/springframework/batch/item/file/FlatFileItemReader.java
+++ b/spring-batch-infrastructure/src/main/java/org/springframework/batch/item/file/FlatFileItemReader.java
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@ package org.springframework.batch.item.file;
 import java.io.BufferedReader;
 import java.io.IOException;
 import java.io.InputStreamReader;
+import java.nio.charset.Charset;
 
 import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
 import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;
@@ -68,7 +69,7 @@ public class FlatFileItemReader<T> extends AbstractItemCountingItemStreamItemRea
 	private static Log log = LogFactory.getLog(FlatFileItemReader.class);
 
 	// default encoding for input files
-	public static final String DEFAULT_CHARSET = "ISO-8859-1";
+	public static final String DEFAULT_CHARSET = Charset.defaultCharset().name();
 
 	private String encoding = DEFAULT_CHARSET;