The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the supplementing European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) provide a framework and methodology for large organisations, and small and medium-sized organisations which are public-interest entities (public companies and those which provide financial service products) meeting specific thresholds to report on their sustainability progress within their annual financial reports.
The methodology requires a double materiality assessment to be conducted which explores the relevance and significance of material impacts, risks and opportunities relating to environmental, social and governance matters. Matters which are deemed material are those which an organisation must report on.
CSRD remains a hot topic in the sustainability landscape as we see more and more EU Member States adopting and putting in place regulations for its implementation. The ultimate goal of CSRD is to ensure organisations report consistently, performance is comparable, and improvement is assessed.
The Legislation
Following Directive (EU) 2022/2464 as regards corporate sustainability reporting (CSRD), published in December 2022, EU Member States were required to implement national laws establishing sustainability reporting requirements by 6th July 2024. In the Republic of Ireland this has been introduced through the European Union (Corporate Sustainability Reporting) Regulations 2024.
Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2772 as regards sustainability reporting standards, published in July 2023, provides the specific reporting standards to be used by organisations in order to comply with CSRD. These standards are also known as the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) and consist of:
- 2 general standards which contain general disclosures about the organisation and how the report has been prepared; and
- 10 topical standards across environmental, social (including health and safety) and governance areas.
The 10 topical standards, and the majority of data points within these, are subject to being found as material to the organisation during a double materiality assessment.
Outlook
As we enter 2025, we’ve seen many (but not all) EU Member States bring CSRD to life with their own national laws and new rules regarding its implementation. The next year will see organisations within the first compliance window publish their annual reports containing their sustainability reporting in line with CSRD.
With so many sustainability reporting standards and guidelines out there, providing us with a plethora of acronyms, it’s easy to get lost, but that’s where CSRD comes in! While CSRD can seem complicated at first glance, the aim is for it to act as a standardised sustainability reporting framework. CSRD incorporates within it many of the pre-existing voluntary and mandatory sustainability reporting functions such as:
- the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (EU SFDR), which requires those operating in the financial services sector to provide information on potential sustainability-related impacts resulting from their operations,
- the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation’s standards covering disclosure of risk and opportunity-related sustainability information (IFRS S1 and S2), and
- the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)’s Sustainability Reporting Standards which are a set of voluntary reporting guidelines,
meaning that multiple reports won’t be necessary if organisations are obliged to report under several frameworks.