The Commission is launching a consultation on the draft revised European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) and a voluntary sustainability reporting standard for smaller companies.
ESRS cover environmental, social, and governance issues, including climate change, biodiversity and human rights. These standards provide information for investors and other stakeholders to understand the sustainability-related risks to which companies are exposed and their impacts on people and the environment.
Building on the Omnibus I simplification package and the streamlined scope of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the draft standards published yesterday aim to cut administrative burden for EU businesses while maintaining high-quality sustainability disclosures.
The draft revised ESRS are shorter and clearer, add new flexibilities, and streamline key processes. They are expected to cut per‑company reporting costs by more than 30%, reduce mandatory datapoints by over 60%, and cut total datapoints by over 70%.
The standards are largely based on the technical advice of EFRAG (previously known as European Financial Reporting Advisory Group) informed by stakeholder input gathered in spring 2025 and a public consultation on EFRAG’s draft in summer 2025.
The Commission is proposing targeted adjustments to further reduce burden without weakening the CSRD’s objectives of improving the quality, consistency, and comparability of sustainability reporting across the EU and increasing transparency on companies’ sustainability impacts and risks.
The draft voluntary standard will support companies outside mandatory CSRD reporting and establishes a ‘value chain cap’, preventing CSRD in-scope companies from requiring more information from value-chain partners with 1,000 employees or fewer than what the voluntary standard covers.
Stakeholders can provide feedback via the Have Your Say portal until 3 June 2026; the Commission will then adopt the two delegated acts as soon as possible and submit them to the European Parliament and Council for scrutiny under the no-objection procedure (two months, extendable by a further two).
Further information on the ESRS revisions and draft voluntary standards, as well as questions and answers regarding the ‘value chain gap’, are available online.
