- Scope: The CSRD reporting requirements will apply to all large EU companies and all listed companies, including listed small and medium-sized enterprises (“SMEs”). This is estimated to cover around 49,000 companies.
- Reporting: The so-called “double materiality” principle remains, but in-scope companies will now have to report according to mandatory sustainability standards. Simpler and “proportionate” standards will apply to listed SMEs.
- Audit: The CSRD will require, for the first time, a general EU-wide audit (assurance) requirement for sustainability information.
- Digitization: The sustainability information must be published in companies’ management reports — and not separately reported — and the information will need to be digitized or “tagged” so it can be incorporated into a planned European Single Access Point.
- Timing: If the proposal is adopted and standards can be agreed in line with current ambitious estimates, large in-scope companies must comply from financial years starting on or after 1 January 2023, publishing reports from 2024; whilst SMEs have to comply from 1 January 2026.
ESG
The EU’s Green Capitalism Takes Shape: Taxonomy Screening Criteria and Corporate Sustainability Reporting
By Paul Mertenskötter & Sinéad Oryszczuk on
The European Commission has presented a package of key enabling legislation on sustainable finance (the “Sustainable Finance Package”). This includes the much-awaited first technical screening criteria under the Taxonomy Regulation — outlined in the Taxonomy Climate Delegated Act (“TCDA”) — and a proposal for a Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (“CSRD”), which significantly revises and expands on the existing Non-Financial Reporting Directive’s remit and disclosure rules for corporates. While the former is directly aimed at financial institutions and investors, and the latter at large and listed entities, the package has broader implications for all corporates.
Sustainable Finance Package: Context and CommentThe Commission’s intention with its Sustainable Finance Package is twofold: (1) in the short term, to set a clear regulatory framework to encourage investments that will contribute to a sustainable and inclusive economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic; and (2) in the long term, to ensure the transition to a carbon neutral EU economy by 2050, in accordance with the 2020 European Climate Law. Following the adoption of the EU Taxonomy Regulation (explained further below), the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, and the Benchmark Regulation, which enhances the transparency of benchmark methodologies, the Commission has in this legislative package laid out the next building blocks for its envisioned sustainable finance ecosystem.
In addition to the impact on financial institutions and investors directly subject to the new laws, the Sustainable Finance Package may impact corporates in the following ways:
- Corporates may be more likely to receive requests for data on their environmental and other sustainability practices as upstream capital markets participants grapple with new obligations to distinguish between green, “light green,” and other investments;
- Corporates may be subject to direct requirements to report on activities relating to their environmental, social, and governance objectives;
- Longer-term, the package may form the basis of a “blueprint” for wider stakeholders, meaning that corporates may need to improve performance against the standards, not just to attract capital, but also to remain competitive; and
- On a global level, these EU sustainability measures have real potential to become gold standards and influence the investment market outside of the EU, a phenomenon known as the ‘Brussels Effect’.[1]