Effective now the European Commission has adopted the Omnibus I simplification package which proposed to limit mandatory sustainability reporting under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) to large companies with more than 1,000 employees.
This future voluntary reporting standard for SMEs with less than 1,000 employees will also act as a “value-chain cap” to protect SMEs and other companies not subject to mandatory reporting under the CSRD from excessive information requests from their value chain partners: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_1843
The voluntary standard for SMEs (VSME) was developed by EFRAG, the Commission’s technical advisory body for sustainability reporting.
The Commission encourages large companies and financial institutions that seek sustainability information from SMEs to base their requests on the voluntary standard as far as possible. SMEs may also wish to voluntarily report sustainability information to improve their access to sustainable finance and better understand and monitor their own sustainability performance, thereby improving their resilience and competitiveness.
For companies with up to 1,000 employees, the Commission proposed a voluntary reporting standard which will be adopted by the Commission, based on the recommendation which has now been adopted. Available here: https://www.efrag.org/sites/default/files/sites/webpublishing/SiteAssets/VSME%20Standard.pdf
The ESG Foundation’s ESG Reporting App for small businesses has been developed to help SME business owners and entrepreneurs embed ESG into their business plans. The ESG Reporting App is free. If some of the questions are not applicable that’s fine. The Foundation’s purpose is to encourage you to think about how ESG principles can make your world better: https://reportingapp.esgfoundation.org/login/?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Freportingapp.esgfoundation.org%2F
