The EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and mandatory EU standards closer to becoming adopted

Following months of negotiations in the European Parliament, the amendments to the CSRD proposal have been approved by the JURI committee this Tuesday 15th of March.

Frank Bold is the coordinator of the Alliance for Corporate Transparency, a platform gathering leading civil society organisations that has provided landmark research and evidence-based recommendations for the reform and development of the sustainability disclosure framework in the EU. More recently, we coordinated a multi-stakeholder statement on the need to swiftly implement the CSRD and EU standards as well as a joint letter with investors, asset managers and civil society organisations sent to Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) calling to broaden the scope of the legislation 

The final vote of the JURI committee has disappointed stakeholders by delaying the application of the new rules an additional year (compared to the initial proposal of the EU Commission), which is problematic from the perspective of EU’s green transition, as well as the urgent need to cut Europe’s dependency on fossil fuels from Russia.

On the upside, the text approved in the JURI committee includes several significant improvements on climate and human rights reporting, and tackles the problematic exemption for large subsidiaries to disclose sustainability information.

Read a detailed analysis of the EU Parliament’s position here: https://bit.ly/3CI47su

The CSRD proposal will now enter into the final phase of the legislative process with trilogue negotiations. As stated by Frank Bold’s Susanna Arus, Communications and EU Public Affairs at Frank Bold:

“An ambitious agreement needs to be reached before summer between co-legislators to avoid further delays. The final CSRD text should incorporate changes proposed by the Parliament that aim to strengthen the quality and relevance of corporate transparency on sustainability matters and dismiss counterproductive proposals that reduce the scope of companies or delay the implementation of a reform key to the transition and resilience of the EU economy”